Methodist

Hong Kong’s Methodist International Church worships in Wesleyan House, a 21-storey tower on an 800-square-metre plot with a worship hall, offices, staff housing and a chapel on the top floor.

After Hurricane Dorian left an estimated 76,000 Bahamians homeless, a Methodist mission camp in Eleuthera became a shelter and St Paul’s Methodist Church in Freeport served about 750 meals a day.

Twenty months after fire gutted St Ann’s Bay Methodist Church, where Marcus Garvey worshipped as a boy, the 1838 building had a new roof. A restoration architect was working to keep its Georgian character as the congregation met in the church hall.

After fire destroyed sections of the Methodist-run Jamaica National Children’s Home in Papine, which houses about 86 children, restoration was estimated at $150 million, while a United Way appeal had raised $7.5 million.

Cobbs Hill Methodist in Warwick, built by enslaved workers in 1827 and Bermuda’s oldest standing Methodist church, sought a new home for its 1883 pipe organ in 2019 as its 22-member congregation looked to find $25,000 for a modern keyboard.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church partnered with 19 Black-owned US banks under Black Wealth 2020, which aims to push Black home ownership above 50 per cent, and its bishops said the possibilities extend to its churches in the Caribbean.

UM News reported sharp increases in property insurance quotes for United Methodist churches, including a Virginia church whose premium jumped from $6,000 to $30,000 and a Tennessee church from $900 to $4,600.

Fire gutted the historic St Ann’s Bay Methodist Church, founded on Emancipation Day 1838 and the childhood church of Marcus Garvey, destroying a 110-year-old pipe organ. The building and contents were insured, with losses expected in the millions.

Facing mounting repair bills, a small Little Rock Methodist congregation voted 28 to 1 to sell its five-storey Gothic church, listed on the National Register, which once served more than 3,400 members.

Hurricane Irma tore the roofs off two Methodist chapels in Anguilla, destroyed a church hall and badly damaged the superintendent’s manse in the British Virgin Islands, prompting a hurricane appeal from British Methodists in September 2017.

Wesley Church in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, which grew from about 35 to more than 600 worshippers, left the United Methodist Church with its property after paying $158,000, while keeping its nearly $4 million mortgage.

Christ United Methodist Church in San Diego closed as a traditional congregation in 2011, but its 25,000-square-foot building became a ministry centre hosting about a dozen congregations and serving around 1,000 people a week.