United Methodists close 20 churches in Alabama: where are they?

United Methodists on Friday voted to close 20 churches in North Alabama, including a church founded in Hoover in 1993 with a 15-acre campus next to Hoover Metropolitan Stadium.

Discovery United Methodist Church, with a 350-seat sanctuary, had grown to 600 members by 2003. The church held its closing service on Easter Sunday, April 20, after years of declining attendance.

The conference has a plan to turn the Discovery campus over to Trinity United Methodist Church in Homewood to possibly reopen next year as a third location of Trinity, which has its main campus on Oxmoor Road and another in West Homewood.

“We want to be part of planning something new, but we want it to be about a redemption story,” said the Rev. Brian Erickson, senior pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church. “A lot of conferences would have just taken that property, sold it and put the money in the bank. I’m so grateful to the conference they want to invest in the kingdom instead. They’re gifting us the property.”

Trinity, which is celebrating its centennial next year, plans to re-launch the campus as the Trinity campus in Hoover by August 2026, Erickson said.

“We’re trying not to get caught in a narrative that we can’t move forward, in places in which there are opportunities for United Methodist presence to be,” said Bishop Jonathan Holston, who oversees all United Methodist churches in Alabama. “That’s what we’re trying to do, is find those places where God has called us to go.”

More than half of all United Methodist churches in Alabama disaffiliated over the past several years, leaving the denomination in a schism. Most negotiated to buy their property and take it with them, although some left empty churches behind. Money paid to the conference by departing churches went into a reserve fund, which the conference is drawing on to make it through current budget deficits.

“We’re still processing all of that, to see where we are,” Bishop Holston said.

Closing declining churches is sometimes necessary, he said.

“It’s always a solemn moment when we think about the mission and ministry of those congregations we are closing,” Bishop Holston said. “They were part of our community.”

The other United Methodist churches announced as closing include:

Jubilee Church in Alexander City

Oak Grove Church in Childersburg

Rehobeth Church in Vincent

Trinity Church at 400 East St. in Talladega

Christ Central Church in Rainbow City

Langston Church near Lake Guntersville in Jackson County

Mt. Oak Church in Marshall County

Tucker’s Chapel in Boaz

Courtland Church in Lawrence County

Hollywood Church in Jackson County

Isom’s Chapel in Athens

Moulton First Church in Lawrence County

The Table, which started in 2015 as a house church in Huntsville

Cahaba Church at 3580 Cahaba Valley Road in Jefferson County

Cottondale Church in Tuscaloosa County

Restoration Mission, 631 3rd St. West in Birmingham

Walker Chapel on Walker Chapel Road in Fultondale

Wesley Chapel in Ralph in Tuscaloosa County

Woodstock Church in Bibb County

Erickson noted that Trinity was once a failed church in Birmingham’s Lakeview neighborhood, before it relocated to Homewood in 1926. The 3,600-member Trinity Church is now one of the largest United Methodist congregations in North Alabama with several thousand members.

“We were a failed church,” Erickson said. “The conference took the proceeds from that building in 1926 that they sold to make the fire station that became Bogue’s and is now Taj India. They set aside that money for a new church in 1926 in Homewood.”

Discovery’s failure was surprising, after a promising start that coincided with Michael Jordan playing baseball for the Birmingham Barons at the Hoover Met in 1994 at the hub of the Trace Crossings subdivision that has more than 1,200 houses.

“It’s really baffling,” Erickson said. “Every church has a life cycle. The lives that were shaped and changed and made better by Discovery, those continue. That legacy will never go away.”