esley United Methodist Church’s congregation is celebrating the faith’s sesquicentennial Sunday.

Like the community surrounding it, the church has grown with the Valley, from its humble beginnings with a circuit preacher to a congregation that follows a mission to “serve Christ, community and creation.”

A formal Methodist presence in the Yakima Valley started in 1860, when James Wilbur was appointed as the supervisor of the Indian Boarding School at Fort Simcoe. A Methodist missionary who previously served in Oregon, Wilbur would become the second Indian agent for the Yakama.

The school’s official mission was to teach Yakama children productive skills, such as farming and making clothes, to help them better fit into white society. In reality, the school’s purpose was to eradicate Yakama culture by shearing boys’ long hair, stripping them of tribal names and forcing them to be baptized.

Wilbur, known to many as “Father Wilbur,” pleaded with church leaders in Oregon to send a circuit rider for the Upper Valley. In 1872, the Rev. George W. Kennedy was dispatched to the area.

Kennedy took up residence at Yakima City — today’s Union Gap — and for several years tended to congregations at Ahtanum, Tampico, Cowiche, Wenas, Parker Bottoms and Moxee.

It is said that Wilbur even took a turn riding the circuit among the congregations.

By 1881, church leaders purchased a lot in Yakima City for a parsonage that would serve as a home base for several circuit preachers.

When the Northern Pacific Railway extended its line into the Yakima Valley and bypassed Yakima City for a city of its own creation — North Yakima — the Methodists were among those who took the railroad up on its offer of free land if they relocated to the new city.

The parsonage was one of the buildings winched across the Valley to the new city, where they received two lots.

The first church meetings in North Yakima were in Centennial Hall, another building that had been hauled up from what is now Union Gap. The Methodists would later use the Presbyterian Church, with a joint Sunday School for both denominations.

Wesley United Methodist Church Sanctuary

The sanctuary at Wesley United Methodist Church was dedicated in 1987.

Donald W. Meyers/Yakima Herald-Republic
Buildings in Yakima
Four years later, church leaders decided to sell the lot in Yakima City and planned to build a church in their new home, setting a minimum budget of $5,000 — $155,986 when adjusted for inflation. It was an audacious move as the church’s bank balance at the time was $16 — almost $500 in today’s cash.

After a few fits and starts, the congregation finally built its church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, at 101 S. Third St. — where today’s Sunfair Professional Building now stands — in 1895. A.H Switzer, who built his eponymous opera house on North Front Street, won the bid to build the church for $4,049 — about $126,317 adjusted.

That wooden church, with seating for 250 people, served as the congregation’s home for the next 10 years. It was at this church where the funeral for Pvt. Mathias Cherry, a member of Yakima-based Company E, First Washington Infantry who was killed in the Philippine-American war, was conducted. Cherry was the first of the company’s war dead to be buried at Tahoma Cemetery.

The church was replaced in 1905 by what was referred to as the “Stone Church” for the quarried stone that made its walls. It was at this church that the congregation became First Methodist Episcopal.

This edifice, which could seat a congregation of 1,200, was built at the southeast corner of what is now North Fourth Street and Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way at a cost of $40,000 — $1.2 million when adjusted for inflation.

But as the 1920s approached, the church was again experiencing growing pains, and there was discussion about whether to remodel the Stone Church or build a more spacious building. The decision was made to build a new church, right next to the existing building at the southwest corner of Staff Sgt. Pendleton Way and North Naches Avenue.

The Light of The World

This stained-glass depiction of William Holman Hunt's "The Light of The World" was made for the First Methodist Church in Yakima. Today, it is displayed in the narthex of Wesley United Methodist Church in Yakima.

Donald W. Meyers/Yakima Herald-Republic
That church was dedicated in 1924. Among its features were an organ that was originally built for the Coliseum in Seattle and a stained-glass window depicting William Holman Hunt’s painting “The Light of The World.”

At this church, the congregation weathered the Great Depression, with the church’s Ladies Aid reaching out to the sick and the needy and the church selling bonds to refinance its debt.

Wesley United Methodist Church Monument

A stone from the 1906 Methodist church and bricks from the 1924 Methodist church form a monument to the Methodist Church in Yakima at Wesley United Methodist Church.

Donald W. Meyers/Yakima Herald-Republic
Moving west
By the 1950s, the downtown church was thriving, but church leaders also realized that the city’s growth was westward. In 1955, 28 members of the congregation were authorized to organize a new congregation in the west side of the city, with $30,000 in seed money to get started.

The first service of the new congregation was at the Nob Hill Grange, at South 48th and West Nob Hill Boulevard. The new congregation was named Yakima Wesley Memorial Methodist, and church members began looking for a permanent home, which they built in 1958 at North 48th and West Yakima avenues.

But by 1966, things were changing downtown, both for the city and the church. Business leaders were looking to revitalize the downtown by building a mall, and the church was sitting on the anchor site for the project.

Also, the downtown church’s congregation was aging, and the church’s edifice was now 40 years old. There was a solution that would address both the business community’s concerns and the church’s needs: Sell the church building and join the west side congregation.

Church members in oral histories recorded in 1985 recalled that arguments for and against the move were “hot and heavy,” even spilling into worship services.

But finally, a vote was taken, and both congregations agreed to merge in the westside church. There were a few congregants who were upset enough by the decision that they joined other churches or started a new community church.

The merger required work on the Wesley building, adding an educational/administrative complex and a second educational wing to the building.

The new congregation, Wesley United Methodist Church, also received a new pastor, the Rev. William A. Ritchey, who sought to reconcile the blended congregation with a message printed in a weekly newsletter.

“This experience should affirm certain things for us. The greatest of these is to teach us once again that the church consists of persons and not a building,” Ritchey wrote. “Loyal, loving and dedicated hearts continue to serve Christ, strengthened and sustained by the blessed memories of the past. It will also help us center down on the essentials needed for the future.”

The church brought items from its former home, including “The Light of the World” window and some of the masonry from the Stone Church and the previous church, which were assembled into a memorial in the church garden.

Wesley United Methodist Church Sanctuary
The last step in the renovation occurred in 1987, when a new sanctuary was dedicated. The old sanctuary became a fellowship hall.

The congregation continues to be involved in the community, leading a recycling program that has diverted 60,000 pounds of trash monthly from the landfill, providing grants to community groups from a financial gift bequeathed by a former church member, and operating the “Free Little Pantry,” a mini food bank where people can take what they need or leave something for others.