March – 100 years ago
The Central Pennsylvania Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church held its 50th annual session March 20-25, 1918, at Newberry Church in Lycoming County. The Semi-Centennial Celebration featured an address by Bishop William Frazier McDowell, greetings from the mother conference (the Baltimore Conference), and the presentation by Rev. A.S. Bowman of a gavel made of wood from Old Stone Church, three miles west of Berwick – built in 1808 and the oldest church still standing in the conference. That gavel is now on display at the conference archives. Old Stone Church, one of our conference historic sites, was restored and rededicated two years ago by its daughter congregation, First Church Berwick.
The previous fall the host Newberry congregation had dedicated an extensive Sunday school addition which included an auditorium, several classrooms, and a basketball court on the lower level. While that complex is no longer used for regular worship, it continues in ministry as the West End Christian Community Center of St. John’s – Newberry UMC.
April – 50 years ago
The United Methodist Church came into being April 23, 1968, in Dallas, Texas. At that time, the Methodist Church (formed in 1939 by the union of the Methodist Protestant Church and the northern and southern branches of the Methodist Episcopal Church) and the Evangelical United Brethren Church (formed in 1946 by the union of the Evangelical and United Brethren denominations) united to create the new ecclesiastical body. The two former denominations were essentially identical in theology and polity and differed only in their founding language, as the former EUB churches had their circa 1800 origins among the German settlers in America.
The United Methodist Church in Pennsylvania maintained overlapping former Methodist and EUB conferences for two years. In 1970 the boundaries were redrawn and the state divided into the Eastern, Central, and Western Pennsylvania conferences – with the northeast corner of Pennsylvania state remaining with southern New York congregations in the Wyoming Conference.
