A 222-year-old United Methodist Church congregation in Montgomery County, Maryland, has 56 days to raise $4 million, its senior pastor said Wednesday.
Without the payment, Oakdale Church in Olney will lose its sanctuary when it departs the denomination, which has become divided over the role of LGBTQ people in ministry.
Established in 1801, Oakdale is one of 22 churches seeking to leave the UMC’s Baltimore-Washington Conference — a regional body akin to a diocese in other denominations. The conference voted to approve the departures earlier this year. “We’ve gone basically to our congregation with an emergency appeal that we need $4 million by October 25 To be able to buy the building that we’ve already paid for,” the pastor said.Along with a historic chapel on the property built in 1914, the main church building and sanctuary were constructed “around 1985” and underwent “a fairly substantial renovation” in 2014 that cost $4 million, Mr. Baker said.
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