In 1968, the Methodist and United Brethren denominations merged to form the United Methodist denomination that we know today. During this time the church continued to meet in the building on Main and Church Streets. In 1973 the average church attendance was approximately 25 people and the entire children's Sunday School could gather around one relatively small table. For years the church at Middletown had been part of various circuits and thus had only limited pastoral service. The Annual Conference determined that the congregation was in serious decline and discontinued pastoral service. Members of the church were determined that it should remain a viable congregation; they made arrangements with Rev. Harry E. Krone, a retired former E.U.B. pastor to serve the church. Under his leadership, the congregation made the difficult decision to move from its home at Main and Church Streets. At the suggestion of Rev. and Mrs. Ray Rhoderick, Dr. and Mrs. Noah Kefauver, Sr. sold a five acre parcel of land in Fountaindale to the congregation for $5,0000. The congregation moved forward toward building a new church and parsonage. The church was designated "a Mission Church" by the Baltimore Conference at this time and received denominational support in paying the minister's salary. In 1972 Rev. Jarrett Wicklein was appointed full-time pastor at Middletown. Calvary United Methodist Church in Frederick pledged $20,000 over several years to help support a new church building. A new parsonage was built on the parcel of land in Fountaindale with the help of a loan from one of the church members and the Wickleins were able to move out of the trailer they had occupied when first coming to Middletown. Partly due to the small size of the congregation and partly due to the hard work of Rev. Wicklein, the congregation became a very cohesive, active group, which met often for a variety of activities generally utilizing private homes for meetings. During the next couple of years the church grew to nearly 100 members consisting of many young families with small children. The church members worked hard at sustaining itself. During this period they held bazaars, cookie swaps, plant sales and a variety of other funding raising and social events. The fire hall was frequently used when a larger area was needed for these events. It soon became evident, however, that the present church was not only too small but had quite a number of other limitations due to its age, such as the fact that the roof leaked and on rainy days water would actually drip through the lighting fixtures in the nursery. Another interesting feature of the nursery was that only a stained glass window, the top of which could be pushed open, separated it from the sanctuary, thereby, allowing parents to "monitor" their children's behavior during the services. With the help of a variety of sources such as the National Division, the Board of Missions, the Baltimore Conference, the Frederick/Hagerstown Mission Society, as well as their own hard work, the church was able to construct the first stage of our current building in 1976. This was a giant leap of faith for a congregation of this size, even with all of this help. Their debts totaled $100,000 and their operating budget was $57,000 at this point. The new church building consisted of the current multipurpose room, which was, of course, used for everything from Sunday services to covered dish dinners, a small church office, the kitchen and two fairly large classroom areas that could be partitioned off to provide smaller Sunday School "classrooms." In this building flexibility was important. Since the multipurpose room was used for a variety of activities as well as worship, all of the chairs needed to be positioned and taken down each Sunday. Although this was a lot of work, it also encouraged Rev. Wicklein, who is a very creative individual, to provide the congregation with a variety of worship arrangements. Our sanctuary was set up facing many directions and sometimes even "in the round." Our Sunday school also continued to grow. As we increased the number of classes we simply built more partitions and the classroom areas became smaller and smaller.

In 1976 the church also started its preschool as a means of community outreach. The first preschool consisted of one class of three year olds which met on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and one class of four year olds which met on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Each class had about 20 students. Grace Smith was both the director and our first preschool teacher. Bev Kline was our first aide.
Although, compared to their previous facility, this new building originally seemed spacious; the church, surrounded by an ever growing community, continued to grow and the "new" building soon became too small. Sunday school classes were meeting in every corner of the church including the kitchen and youth classes were meeting in the basement of the parsonage. By this time another change had also taken place, Rev. Wicklein was reassigned to another church by the Annual Conference and Rev. Susan Halse arrived in 1981 to lead us through our next phases of growth. In the early 1980's Middletown United Methodist church, or MUMC, launched into another planning and fundraising campaign. In 1987 our next building addition was completed. Our congregation now had the present formal sanctuary, and an enlarged narthex with five additional classrooms on the basement level. This not only enabled us to better meet the needs of our ever growing Sunday School programs, but to greatly expand our already growing preschool as well. This addition cost $750,000 and was financed in part by loans from local banks and the National Division. About a third of this money was also provided by fundraisers and gifts from members of the congregation. However, at this point our church had become self-sufficient. The congregation now had grown to 458 members. By the late 1980's MUMC had progressed from being a small mission church that needed help from others to survive to being a large church that was increasingly in mission to others. A small gift was given to another mission church, Asbury United Methodist Church in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. From this gift a strong bond to this congregation was forged and the two congregations remain close today. We also began to participate in the Appalachian Service Project, which has helped quite a few poor families in Appalachia improve the quality of their lives. Parent's Time Out (PTO), another outreach program designed to help mothers who were staying at home with small children, started in 1988. It has expanded from one morning a week to numerous before and after school programs, as well as summer programs for children of the church and surrounding community. Our congregation still continued to grow and by the early 1990's it again became apparent that our building was too small. Various options to expand our facilities were again considered and funds were raised. In 1994 a two-story education building was added to the south end of our building at a cost of approximately $400,000. It contained eleven new rooms: ten classrooms and a multipurpose room. The congregation of Middletown United Methodist Church has grown from about 25 people in 1973 to 669 people in 1996 and we're still continuing to grow today!

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Questions about Middletown United Methodist Church should be sent to the Church Office.

7108 Fern Circle · Middletown, MD 21769
voice: (301) 371-5550 · fax: (301) 473-8090
TTY: (301) 473-9892