In late January, the Sycamore Tree United Methodist Church gathered for its last worship service and subsequently closed. The church’s property, consisting of a 17,000 square foot building on a 5 acre lot at 1830 Clydesdale Street, became the responsibility of the Smoky Mountain District and ultimately the Holston Conference.

In late May, the Holston Conference trustees voted to convey the property to our congregation, with the condition that we satisfy the remaining indebtedness associated with the property. The conference trustees valued the property at $1.9 million; the outstanding debt was $213,388.

The 1st UMC Church Council and Board of Trustees met jointly at the Sycamore Tree site to see and pray over the building and grounds and to discuss whether and how our church might use this property to carry out our mission and ministry. Days later, both bodies voted unanimously to receive the conveyance and to pay the remaining debt from designated funds and strategic ministry opportunity reserve funds.  The conveyance became official in late September 2023. 

How will we use this new property to carry out our mission and ministry? There are almost countless ways that we might expand our congregation’s ministries into a new area of our community. In the near term, however, one of the earliest uses will be to share space with some of our community ministry partners.

We anticipate that Family Promise of Blount County will soon occupy parts of the facility for office space and for housing families. Our hope and expectation is that other community help agencies with whom we partner will also relocate to the Sycamore Tree campus so that our most vulnerable neighbors can access several layers of assistance in one place.

We are grateful to God for this opportunity to share blessing with our community and region in new ways. Please pray that God’s Holy Spirit will reveal to us the God-sized visions of how we might use this gift in the most fruitful, faithful, effective ways.