Our story
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First United Methodist Church, Middletown is a church with deep history that is building a hopeful future for faith for today's people in Connecticut and the world. We invite you to help us build that future with open minds and open hearts.
We were founded in 1791, by the legendary preacher and circuit rider Jesse Lee, one of the first Methodist congregations in the state. Methodism has been a part of Middletown ever since. After centuries of worship in traditional church buildings, we now worship in an open and simple space, creating new traditions of healing, hope and transformation through faith. Our worship experience brings us back to the way that Christianity started two thousand years ago. The disciples of Jesus Christ were gathered for a traditional holy celebration in a borrowed upper room of someone’s home, some fifty days after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Through their joyous faith and hope in Jesus Christ, God’s Holy Spirit enveloped them as if they were on fire – and the church, empowered by God to transform the world, was born (see Acts 2). We can worship God anyplace, because faith can allow any place to be where we open ourselves to God’s presence in the Holy Spirit. Our faith and hope is growing as we dedicate ourselves to God’s missions, based on our faith-filled United Methodist traditions. We welcome people like you who are joining us to build a new future for themselves, for Middletown, and for the world, through lives built upon faith in Jesus Christ. Like those early disciples of Jesus, we are focused not on buildings, but on being people who are learning how to serve the God who changes lives here and now. When the time is right, we may build another church building, but today, the people of First UMC Middletown are focused on being the church – alive, growing in faith, and inviting everyone to come alive in God through faith. We follow the United Methodist Church's message of "Open hearts, open minds, open doors." We feel that God is calling this congregation to make disciples of all persons to serve Christ in the world as an inclusive and loving community. We welcome you to become a part of the story of God in faith! |
Our history
First United Methodist Church, Middletown grew out of the New England “Great Awakening” revival in the 1740’s. Of the Rev. George Whitfield’s preaching in New Haven, old Mr. Talcott Governor of Connecticut said, “Thanks be to God for such refreshings on our way to heaven.” Nineteen year old Thomas Hopkins, then a freshman at Yale, wrote in his diary “The attitude of the people in general was greatly awakened…that there was a remarkable preacher from England traveling through the country.” (Ibid. 186) More remarkable were those touched by Whitfield, among them a ‘colored’ man, a criminal and his daughter, a black army trumpeter who had brought his trumpet to break up the revival service, and a descendant of Uncas, Chief of the Mohegans, who later became the Reverend Samson Occum! So grateful for Whitfield was John Wesley, priest of the Church of England who founded Methodism, that he wrote in the funeral sermon he delivered for Whitfield, that “In his public labors (he) has for many years astonished the world with his eloquence and devotion. With what divine pathos did he persuade the impenitent sinner to embrace the practice of early piety and virtue.” (Ibid. 448)
But it was Jesse Lee’s preaching in 1791 that finally inaugurated a Methodist Circuit including the town of Middletown, on the Connecticut River half way between Hartford and New Haven. By 1804, our town had become the center of the Circuit and had received its first settled pastor, the Rev. Ebenezer Washburn. In 1816, the Methodists established a separate Charge here, further strengthened in 1831 through its association with Wesleyan University.
This greater Middletown congregation has lived and served in four different buildings and is currently in transition until we find a new building. The last building, 24 Old Church Street, above South Green, was a red brick church of 1805 (42’/32’), the larger brick edifice of 1828 (75’/55’), the Akron-style brick edifice erected after a fire, and the Gothic chapel of cream and tan-colored limestone, built during the pastorate of the Rev. Marion Creeger, early in whose ministry here the brick building also burned. At the time of its construction (1931), this edifice was considered “one of the finest Methodist Church buildings in the country.”
From the beginning, our congregation has been mission and worship oriented. It formed the Wesleyan College Church and Sunday School Union (1836-87), strengthening ties with college students, faculty and administration. In 1909, Dr. F.H. Wright spoke on encouraging the development of an Italian Mission by asking “Is the Italian a Desirable Element in our Immigration: Our Duty to the Italian Immigrant.” We still have the old bible in Italian used in that chapel. And this was part of a lasting movement among 'unchurched' Italian immigrants. By 1916, a Rev. C.M. Penunzio of Boston had witnessed to his own vocation to the ministry in his “A Stranger in a Strange Land: or from Ship to Pulpit.” Also during the same decades, the church generously supported The Freeman’s Aid Society for the training of Negro youth; and in 1934, after only four years in the new building, the First Methodist Episcopal Church and Wesleyan celebrated the Centennial of Jason Lee’s first mission to the Flathead Indians of the Oregon Territory. In 1828, this very missionary was commissioned in our old brick, Akron-style church.
On the 7th Sunday of Pentecost 2004, not long after the appointment of Pastor Kwang-il Kim, the Rev. Thomas Beveridge, who grew up in FMEC, Middletown, preached of how his future vocation had appeared to him in the congregation of his childhood. He spoke of Mrs. Ralph Porter, his first Sunday School teacher, whose “In the beginning, God,” stuck in his memory; of Adolph Pauli, blind professor of classics at Wesleyan and Sunday School Superintendent, who helped open him to people with disabilities; and of the then organist, Wesleyan Professor Karl Pomeroy Harrington, who designed the organ we used in our old building, and whose Christmas Carol, There’s a Song in the Air, appeared first in the Methodist Episcopal Hymnal of 1935. Beveridge had also sung the parts of one or another of the Kings in our annual, and now 75 year old, Christmas Pageant, which Mrs. Pauli helped to start.
If you would like to learn more about First UMC Middletown, come worship with us!
But it was Jesse Lee’s preaching in 1791 that finally inaugurated a Methodist Circuit including the town of Middletown, on the Connecticut River half way between Hartford and New Haven. By 1804, our town had become the center of the Circuit and had received its first settled pastor, the Rev. Ebenezer Washburn. In 1816, the Methodists established a separate Charge here, further strengthened in 1831 through its association with Wesleyan University.
This greater Middletown congregation has lived and served in four different buildings and is currently in transition until we find a new building. The last building, 24 Old Church Street, above South Green, was a red brick church of 1805 (42’/32’), the larger brick edifice of 1828 (75’/55’), the Akron-style brick edifice erected after a fire, and the Gothic chapel of cream and tan-colored limestone, built during the pastorate of the Rev. Marion Creeger, early in whose ministry here the brick building also burned. At the time of its construction (1931), this edifice was considered “one of the finest Methodist Church buildings in the country.”
From the beginning, our congregation has been mission and worship oriented. It formed the Wesleyan College Church and Sunday School Union (1836-87), strengthening ties with college students, faculty and administration. In 1909, Dr. F.H. Wright spoke on encouraging the development of an Italian Mission by asking “Is the Italian a Desirable Element in our Immigration: Our Duty to the Italian Immigrant.” We still have the old bible in Italian used in that chapel. And this was part of a lasting movement among 'unchurched' Italian immigrants. By 1916, a Rev. C.M. Penunzio of Boston had witnessed to his own vocation to the ministry in his “A Stranger in a Strange Land: or from Ship to Pulpit.” Also during the same decades, the church generously supported The Freeman’s Aid Society for the training of Negro youth; and in 1934, after only four years in the new building, the First Methodist Episcopal Church and Wesleyan celebrated the Centennial of Jason Lee’s first mission to the Flathead Indians of the Oregon Territory. In 1828, this very missionary was commissioned in our old brick, Akron-style church.
On the 7th Sunday of Pentecost 2004, not long after the appointment of Pastor Kwang-il Kim, the Rev. Thomas Beveridge, who grew up in FMEC, Middletown, preached of how his future vocation had appeared to him in the congregation of his childhood. He spoke of Mrs. Ralph Porter, his first Sunday School teacher, whose “In the beginning, God,” stuck in his memory; of Adolph Pauli, blind professor of classics at Wesleyan and Sunday School Superintendent, who helped open him to people with disabilities; and of the then organist, Wesleyan Professor Karl Pomeroy Harrington, who designed the organ we used in our old building, and whose Christmas Carol, There’s a Song in the Air, appeared first in the Methodist Episcopal Hymnal of 1935. Beveridge had also sung the parts of one or another of the Kings in our annual, and now 75 year old, Christmas Pageant, which Mrs. Pauli helped to start.
If you would like to learn more about First UMC Middletown, come worship with us!
