Georgetown United Methodist Church' s Story

The Dream Begins

The dream of a Methodist congregation in the Jenison area began in the late 1950s as a tremendous boom in church-building in the Grand Rapids suburbs took hold.   Growth in the Jenison area really took off in the early 1960s and the area was put on a list of potential church development by the United Methodist Union.  In the mid-1960s, however, the boom in church-building  faded and the Union’s interest in a Jenison congregation faded with it.

In the meantime, Grandville United Methodist Church was experiencing a great deal of growth, with a sizable number of folks from the Jenison area. Interest in a Jenison church was renewed and in 1968 and the property at the corner of Baldwin Street and 28th Avenue was purchased. Surveys taken in 1967 and 1973 indicated that, while there were many Methodists living in Georgetown Township, there was only limited interest in a new church. So, the property sat undeveloped.  In response to the results of the 1973 survey, the Vice President of the Methodist Union wrote, “My suggestion was to sell the property. It seemed obvious to me that if a new church were to have begun, it would have happened by then.”