Honey Brook United Methodist Church
Our Purpose:
Open Our Hearts To God's Love, Open Our Doors To God's People.
OUR JOURNEY:
In the early 1800's, itinerant Methodist preachers from the Lancaster and Chester circuits visited the area we now know as Elverson and started Methodist "classes". These classes met in the homes of the members.
It was not many years until this movement spread across the mountain to our area - Waynesburg, as our little town was called back then. The first class numbered ten people.
The year was 1823 and James Monroe was President of the United States. Henry Boehm, an itinerant preacher from the Lancaster circuit met with a group of people in the home of William Climenson. It was at this meeting resolutions were passed to construct a meeting house.
Our first church was located within what is now the Methodist cemetery, at the corner of Chestnut and Water Streets. This was the first church in the town of Waynesburg and today it is the oldest continuous organization in the Borough of Honey Brook.
The membership of the church increased rapidly and it was necessary to enlarge the church or build a new one. In January of 1837, a resolution was passed authorizing the building of a new church near the center of Waynesburg.
The second Methodist church (the current building) was built in the early 1840's. At that time, the windows were colonial style (small panes of clear glass). These windows were replaced with the stained glass windows in 1899.
In 1899, a teenage girl named Lela McConnell came to know Jesus Christ at a revival held at Honey Brook Methodist Episcopal Church. She went on to become an ordained local elder in the Methodist Episcopal Church, serving in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Through her teaching, evangelism, and leadership, Kentucky is blessed with the Kentucky Mountain Bible College and other ministries that spread the Gospel to the people of that region.
In Rev. McConnell's spirit, our goal is to make disciples that will have an equally profound influence on our world today. Like her, we take seriously the fact that God is the ultimate leader of the church, who shows us the qualities of leadership through Christ. We are on a journey to discover deeper ways to respond to Jesus' invitation to "follow me". We truly are on a journey....come along?