Wednesday, December 17, 2003

dc church

The one parish church that has meant the most to me in life is neither Baptist nor Episcopalian.

It's is Methodist. Dumbarton United Methodist Churchin Georgetown, DC, is is one of the most interesting and welcoming parishes that I've ever experienced.

The church is old. It pre-dates the American Methodist denomination by about ten years or so, having been started as a Methodist study group in a Georgetown cooper's barn in the 18th century. Sometime in the late 1960s, it lost the last of its old congregation and picked up a handful of young folk, professionals in the city who were looking for a church that made some kind of sense for them and their famlies.

DC appears to attract the spiritually restive. Church of the Savior, and its many children, came about under similar circumstances when Gordon and Mary Cosby moved into the city after World War II and re-imagined what a church out to look like.

Similarly Sojourners developed in the 70s as a community and ministry.

Dumbarton is not a large church. When we were there, it had about 100 or so families participating in the congregation. There is zero parking, and in Georgetown that makes getting to it quite difficult. The Georgetown neighborhood had zoned parking hours extended to nighttime, making it next to impossible to legally park on the street on weeknights.

And being located literally a blocked each way from two Episcopal parishes, it is especially hard to find parking during Holy Week services.

No comments: