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Our Church Heritage
Our first
congregation met in a small room church known as Gideon Chapel Methodist
Protestant Church, located on the south side of Crain Highway two miles south of
our present building. Gideon Chapel was a part of the Anne Arundel Circuit of
the Methodist Protestant Church. The earliest documented date for Gideon Chapel
is an 1860 map.
By 1891 our membership records indicate that we had become a part of Marley
Circuit; at this time the Gideon Chapel had been moved to a different site on
Crain Highway --land donated by Benson Warfield. It was then renamed Warfield
Chapel Methodist Protestant Church. The growing congregation then built a new
and larger one room church on the same site in 1906.
Twenty years later, after a two year association with Nichols Memorial Church in
Odenton, Warfield Chapel became self-supporting and its first full time pastor
was appointed. The congregation relocated to a new and larger brick church at our
present site on Crain Highway. This was known as Glen Burnie Methodist Protestant Church until 1939 when we became the
Glen Burnie Methodist Church. This name
remained until 1968 when we became the United Methodist Church through the
merger of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Churches.
Because of the growing congregation the church was enlarged in 1952 and again
in 1965. The present parsonage was built in 1957.
It could be said that the heritage of Glen Burnie United Methodist Church
consists of "three small churches" plus "three buildings" of this present
structure. However important the buildings, it is the people who make the church
and we are forever indebted to those faithful servants of our Lord who, for over
130 years, have kept the spirit of God alive in this community.
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