Our Story

Hopewell UMC’s history extends back to the late 1700’s when settlers, having left the areas of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, headed south.  They called this area “Hopewell” for the Hopewell township in Pennsylvania and the Hopewell Presbyterian Church on the banks of the Susquehanna River. A log school was built in 1790, which also served as a meeting place for religious services. Most of the settlers around “Hopewell” were Quakers and Presbyterians, but many of them converted to Methodism as a result of the influence of the Methodist circuit riders of the day.
 
Hopewell Methodist Episcopal Church was officially founded in 1822. The name was changed to Hopewell United Methodist Church in 1968, with the unification of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren. Currently the church is in its fifth building, the latest being a beautiful granite stone structure built after World War II. In 2004, we completed an addition of a narthex and education building to improve our outreach to the community of Trinity.

As Christians we know that it is the people- and not the building- that have made and continue to make Hopewell the vibrant place that it is today: people who come to learn about and to worship God, who care about and share with each other through fellowship, and who reach out with the love of Christ to those who are in need. Hopewell United Methodist Church is a place where each member is important and each member is needed in order that the church might continue to fulfill its mission to introduce the love of God to the people of the community and the world through example and witness. 

Day by day – year by year – drawn together by God through our love for Jesus Christ, we seek to be molded into the church God wants us to be. We truly desire  “To know Jesus Christ and make Him known.”