Our History

For more than 180 years, a Methodist congregation has gathered in Beaverton — through a frontier camp meeting, a downtown corner it has held since 1885, and a welcome it keeps widening to this day.

Reviewed by the Beaverton First UMC editorial team · Fact-checked June 2026

Beaverton First United Methodist Church was founded in 1843 — the same year Oregon’s settlers gathered at Champoeg to form their first provisional government.¹ The Methodist movement had only just reached the Willamette Valley, and nearly everywhere it traveled it gathered people into congregations. Ours was one of the earliest on the Tualatin plains, and it has never stopped meeting.

Methodism comes to the Willamette Valley

The story really begins nine years earlier and some forty miles to the south. In 1834 the missionary Jason Lee established the Willamette Mission near present-day Salem — the first Protestant mission in the Oregon Country.²³ From there Methodist circuit riders fanned out across the valley, and within a decade their camp meetings reached the Tualatin plains where Beaverton would grow.

A camp meeting on the Tualatin plains (1843)

By the congregation’s own account, Beaverton First began in 1843 as a Methodist camp meeting, with the earliest services held in the log cabin of a Reverend Tom Cornell.¹ In those first decades the young congregation was served by traveling and early resident preachers, in the circuit-riding pattern Methodism carried west.

Founded the same year Oregon formed its first government — a church and a state, growing up together.

Putting down roots at 4th & Watson

In 1885 the church moved to the corner of 4th and Watson that it still occupies in downtown Beaverton.¹ Rev. Calvin Bryant became its first resident pastor in 1886.¹ The building was remodeled in the early 1910s to make room for a growing congregation, and through the Great Depression the church kept its doors — and its pantry — open to neighbors in need.¹

Building for a growing city

The post-war boom remade Beaverton, and the church grew with it. A new education building went up in 1953, the current sanctuary was built in 1959, and Wesley Hall was completed in 1966.¹ The congregation flourished in those years under pastors such as Rev. Horace Mounts and Rev. James McCobb.¹

An open door, still widening

Buildings and pastors have changed; the calling hasn’t. Today Beaverton First is a Reconciling Congregation — part of a movement within The United Methodist Church that publicly welcomes people of every age, background, ability, race, sexual orientation, and gender identity as people of sacred worth.⁸ It is the same impulse that pitched a tent on the Tualatin plains in 1843, grown wider over three centuries: open hearts, open minds, open doors.

For where the whole movement comes from, read the story of Methodism; for how our story ties into the founding of Oregon, see Beaverton First & Methodism in Oregon; and whenever you’re ready, you’d be welcome to join us for worship.