The Methodist Church in Boerne was founded 150 years ago in May 1875. This anniversary is being celebrated by the First United Methodist Church (FUMC) with special events throughout 2025.
Protestant religions were not legal in Texas under Mexican rule. Texas won its independence from Mexico in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 and the Methodist General Conference immediately established the Texas Mission to send missionaries to Texas.
The most efficient way to bring Methodism to the many scattered communities and settlements across the vast land mass of Texas was by ministers on horseback. These men rode from town to town on prescribed circuits hundreds of miles long.
This was difficult and dangerous work. A solitary rider passing through unsettled land was subject to attack by hostile tribes and outlaw gangs. These circuit riders traveled heavily armed with rifles and revolvers.
The circuit rider would preach wherever he could gather a small group — in a saloon, in a dance hall, in a private home or on a street corner.
When he appeared on the street, local rowdies often came to mock, harass and attempt to drive him away. They saw religion as a threat to their chosen life of drinking, gambling and fighting.
In 1844, the Rev. John Wesley DeVilbiss reached San Antonio and preached the first Methodist sermon there. He was accompanied by the Rev. John McCullough, a Presbyterian minister who shared the ministry.
They found the city, “a dilapidated miserable-looking place ... semi-barbaric,” in DeVilbiss’ writings. McCullough tried to start college but after a drunken gambler rode a horse into his room and fired two shots through his hat he left, bound for Galveston, Texas.
Circuit riders sometimes preached in Boerne, but no one attempted to establish a church there until 1875. The Rev. James Monroe Witt gathered five Methodists into a congregation and added the Boerne church to his circuit.
The Rev. Witt came to visit Boerne once a month and the church, having no building, met in private homes or commercial establishments to listen to a sermon.
One of the most famous circuit riders, the Rev. Andrew Jackson Potter — “the fighting parson” — lived in Boerne but was not part of the founding of the church in 1875. He was then serving the Uvalde circuit which took him far from his home in Boerne.
However, in 1876 he was reassigned to the Bandera circuit which included Boerne.
The first Boerne church was built in 1879. This three-room structure stood next to the Catholic church just outside the town limits. The experience of the German settlers was that organized religion in Europe was part of a system that oppressed freedom, so they would permit no churches to be built within the town.
In 1900, the building was moved down Main Street on log rollers to the present location on James Street. A new sanctuary was built in 1960 and in 1967 the Saxon Hall Educational building was added.
The Methodist Church split in 1844 into the Methodist Episcopal North and South over the issue of slavery. In 1939, along with a group called the Methodist Protestant Church, they all reunited as the “Methodist Church.”
During the ecumenical movement of the 1960s the Evangelical United Brethren Church united with the Methodist Church to form the current United Methodist Church.
Senior Pastor Kim Burke has said, “First United Methodist Church has remained true to its Methodist heritage of social holiness, whether partnering with local agencies, creating vital ministries or sharing the good news of Christ both here and around the world.”
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