After this month, one of the seven oldest Methodist congregations in Alabama will no longer be a Methodist church.
The Hazel Green church formerly known as State Line Methodist Church, in more recent years called Genesis United Methodist Church, is being shut down by the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.
Some remaining church members have chosen to disaffiliate with the denomination under guidelines for separation adopted by the United Methodist General Conference in 2019. For now, they intend to continue as a non-denominational church.
While Genesis has fewer than 50 members remaining, it is a dramatic turn as far as its significance in Methodist history in Alabama. In 2002, the congregation experienced a split, with about 30 members leaving to form the nearby Grace Family Worship Center in Hazel Green.
The State Line Methodist Church’s origins trace back to October 1808, when Bishop Francis Asbury appointed a circuit-riding preacher, James Gwinn, to start churches in what is now northeastern Alabama. That resulted in the first seven Methodist churches in Alabama. Asbury, born in England, was sent by Methodist founder John Wesley to carry Methodism to the United States in 1771. In 1784, Wesley named him co-superintendent of the work in America. Asbury spent 45 years in the colonies and the newly founded United States and helped coordinate the spread of Methodism in the South.
“I do think it’s historically significant,” said Nancy Wilkinson Van Valkenburg, historian for First United Methodist Church of Huntsville, which traces its history back to the same origin date. “It was one of the seven original Methodist churches in Alabama, part of the Flint Circuit.”
Baptist and Methodist preachers followed the earliest white settlers into North Alabama, leading worship in early pioneer communities that tended to be located along creeks and rivers in the Tennessee Valley. The first Baptist church in the territory of Alabama, prior to statehood in 1819, was the Flint River Baptist Church founded on Oct. 2, 1808.
“This area was Chickasaw and Cherokee,” said Van Valkenburg, past chair of the Historic Huntsville Foundation. “There were Methodist societies with the settlers who came in.”
The founding date of the Methodist churches is considered Oct. 8-13, 1808, the date of the conference in Liberty Hill, Tennessee, where Bishop Asbury appointed the circuit-riding preachers to officially establish congregations. “It made them official,” Van Valkenburg said. “The societies were already meeting. Churches couldn’t own property until Alabama became a state.”
The first church in what is now Alabama was founded in Mobile. Two Jesuit priests helped found the first Catholic church in Alabama in 1702, a small wooden chapel called the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile.
Pistols in the pulpit
In the 1920s, the State Line Methodist Church had gone dormant as the community was taken over by bootleggers, said the Rev. Steve West, pastor of Jacksonville First United Methodist Church. West said his grandfather, the Rev. C.P. Hamby, was sent to revive it. Bootleggers disrupted one of his revival services, so he went to the sheriff’s office in Huntsville and asked to be deputized, according to the family story. Armed with a Bible, a badge and a pair of pistols, Hamby revived the church and about 30 bootleggers came to the church and professed their faith, West said.
“For some 100 years, they have made disciples in that place,” said West. “I mostly feel gratitude for that. Most churches go through a life cycle. Nothing’s permanent.”
It’s still bittersweet to lose the history, he said. “The first circuit rider came down through the Tennessee Valley, sent directly by Bishop Asbury,” West said.
“I’m very sad to lose it,” Van Valkenburgh said. “It has played an important role.”
Charismatic revival
During the 1970s and 1980s, the State Line Methodist Church took a theological turn and became fully immersed in the charismatic movement.
“When I was there as a young child, it was really a charismatic Methodist church, which some in the conference had problems with,” said the Rev. Eric Lones, former youth pastor of State Line Methodist Church and now pastor of Grace Family Worship Center in Hazel Green.
Lones said charismatic revivals took hold when Carey Johnson was pastor of State Line Methodist and crowds filled the 300-seat sanctuary.
“It was alive,” Lones said. “People were healed. I remember the singing, people shouting, the excitement and life. There was a revival in the ’70s; people would come for days, pray and repent. Most Methodists sprinkle; we had a baptistery.”
His father, Eddie Lones, was pastor from 1997-2002, and is now associate pastor at Grace Family Worship. They left together in 2002 to start Grace.
“I was a very immature youth pastor that for some reason felt like he should start a church,” Eric Lones said. “I’m not the same guy I was when that happened. I grew up in that church. It formed me. The people there formed who I was. They were my family. God has used it. I think there’s been reconciliation. We love each other. I think those wounds have been healed and they have forgiven me.”
Lones said that he’s glad the remaining congregation will continue what’s left of State Line Church. The Methodist affiliation had been less important since the charismatic renewal, he said.
“It would sadden me if it was closing down permanently, to know it was no longer going to be a church there,” Lones said. “That’s where I want to be buried. It means that much to me. It’s home.”
Recovery from pandemic shutdown
The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church has 650 churches, with 122,962 members. Much of the worship during 2020 took place virtually due to the pandemic, with churches shifting to a focus on online services, then gradually resuming in-person worship.
West noted that Sunday, June 6, was the first Sunday that face masks were not required during in-person worship services at Jacksonville First United Methodist Church, for those who have been vaccinated. About 10 percent still wore masks, he said. After several starts and stops of in-person worship, about 25 percent of the congregation came back when services first resumed on a permanent basis this year, and increased to about 50 percent of normal attendance about six weeks ago as more people felt comfortable returning to in-person worship, he said. Livestreaming of services online will continue, he said. Before the pandemic shut down in-person worship in March 2020, the church had never done video livestreaming. “We didn’t even know how to do it,” West said.
The North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church, meeting virtually with some in-person services including an ordination ceremony in person at Asbury United Methodist Church in Shelby County, voted on Saturday to close six churches:
- Curry (Central District)
- Genesis (Northeast District)
- Hannah (Southwest District)
- McKinley (Central District)
- Rocky Mount (Southeast District)
- Salem (Northwest District)
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Methodists drop state line church, one of the seven original Methodist churches in Alabama - AL.com
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