The History of St. Mark's
St. Mark’s history began with the recognition by Bishop Richard C. Raines and the Cabinet that a new church was needed on the rapidly growing eastern edge of Bloomington. A survey was conducted among the members of First Methodist Church to learn who would be willing to transfer to the new congregation. In addition to people, First Church provided financial assistance; but the major support came from the Conference Church Extension Program. From the beginning, then, St. Mark’s was a mission church and a church with a mission.
The name “St. Mark’s” was at first a temporary name used by the Indiana Conference to refer to this one of four proposed new churches. In planning sessions someone had named the four after the Gospels—St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John. Some of these churches, St. Mark’s among them, chose to keep their names. It is of interest that, at the time, very few Methodist churches had been named for saints of the church.
Sunday worship services were held in the large chapel at Day Funeral Home, beginning October 1, 1954. On the first 27 Sundays, attendance averaged 68 adults in the worship service and 50 children in Sunday School, which was held in the basement of the parsonage and in four nearby homes.
St. Mark’s Methodist Church was formally constituted on February 6, 1955, with 48 members, and closed its charter on May 1, 1955, with 83 persons on its rolls. The congregation assumed funding of the parsonage and received $25,000 from the Conference to purchase land for the church and to begin construction of the church building.
The building as it stands today was completed in three phases: the first being the Fellowship Hall and a church school wing, dedicated for worship on March 30, 1958—Palm Sunday; the second being the Sanctuary and additional church school rooms, completed February 21, 1965. On February 22, 1998, construction began on an expansion that filled in the courtyard with a large fellowship hall, additional classrooms, office space, a larger kitchen, and larger restrooms.
Today the congregation is housed in a lovely, modern building on a hill just off Highway 46 Bypass. It has been served by talented and faithful ministers and staff members who have helped the congregation to shape a ministry of service in the Bloomington community.
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"The Symbols of St. Mark's" booklet
John Wesley & Methodism
John Wesley was educated at Oxford and ordained as an Anglican minister, but he became dissatisfied with his attempts to find religious satisfaction through strict adherence to the rules and doctrines of the church.
While still attending Oxford University, John and his brother Charles founded the "Holy Club". Members of this group arranged for themselves a rigorous daily schedule which included specific hours for visiting the sick, teaching the poor, and observing religious services in church. In addition, they prayed out loud three times each day and stopped for a silent prayer every hour. One of the kinder epithets used about this group was "Methodists," and this name stuck to Wesley and his followers because of his stress upon following rules when it came to personal conduct and religious observances.
Between 1735 and 1738 Wesley spent time in Georgia as a missionary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. While here, he learned a number of uniquely American practices which would later come to distinguish Methodism from other Christian denominations. Among them were extempore prayer, outdoor preaching, and the creation of new hymns to sing. He also became influenced by the Moravians who were there - the Moravians were a group of German Pietists.
During a prayer meeting on May 24th, 1738, he had a religious experience where he learned that it was not so much through rules but rather through faith in God's mercy that a person would achieve salvation. When he preached his ideas, he found many people who were interested in what he had to say and the movement spread quickly throughout England, Ireland and later America. Unlike typical Anglican ministers, John and his brother Charles traveled around the countryside and preached to spontaneous groups in fields and along roadsides.
Wesley was not trying to create a new Christian sect, but rather simply societies within the established Anglican Church. He was not a systematic theologian and did not try to create a new set of religious doctrine. His focus was on reaching out to the general public and bringing them to a personal feeling of the love of God. He did not, however, receive a lot of support from the Anglican hierarchy and the Bishop of London would neither ordain the group's leaders nor consecrate the meeting places.
After the Anglican clergy fled America during the Revolution, Wesley was faced with the problem of finding the means to care for some 15,000 followers there and took the unusual step of ordaining some ministers on his own authority. This step was key in the creation of the Methodist Church and the first Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in Baltimore on December 24, 1784.
Wesley died peacefully, after a short illness, leaving as the result of his life-work over 135,000 members and 541 itinerant preachers under the name "Methodist."