Latest on Methodist Church Ending its Congregation at Water’s Edge, Tales of the Cornerstone and Other Stories from Church Row

By Eric DuVall / Pt Loma – OB Monthly / Jan. 16, 2024

Standing on the southwest corner of the bustling intersection at Saratoga Avenue and Sunset Cliffs Boulevard, the big Methodist church has been a hub of Ocean Beach activity for just shy of a century.

Something is happening on the church campus every day. Weekdays often are even busier than Sundays, at least in the past few years. The Pioneer School’s Community High School and Community Connections Program for young adults with developmental disabilities calls the church school building home Mondays through Fridays. OB’s Loaves & Fishes food pantry serves hundreds of hungry folks weekly from its ground-floor space on the Saratoga Avenue side of the church building.

The church sanctuary provides a splendid venue for the monthly lecture series of the Ocean Beach Historical Society, now entering its 30th season. In an upstairs room, the Historical Society maintains an archive of local history, thanks to the largesse of the church.

One could accurately characterize the facility as a cornerstone of the community.

The cornerstone

You may then be able to appreciate my befuddlement when one morning in early December, I happened to notice that the old building’s cornerstone had gone missing. Hadn’t there been a plaque there or something similar, with the date the place was built, probably? It seemed an unusual development.

It was no secret that First United Methodist Church was terminating its Ocean Beach congregation, known in recent years as Water’s Edge Faith Community, on Christmas Eve. But seeing that big hole in the wall brought home the fact that a large chunk of the community was already gone.

You hear about cornerstones being laid, of course, but I had never heard of one being removed. I consulted a freemason associate of mine on the particulars of cornerstone removal. Was there some metaphysical significance to such a maneuver — more than just the church pulling up stakes? Not that he knew of.

Slight further investigation (a couple of phone calls) turned up that the cornerstone had concealed a time capsule.

Three weeks later, a couple of fortuitous flukes brought that time capsule — a 10-by-14-inch steel box — into the temporary custody of the Ocean Beach Historical Society.

What exactly was in that time capsule? There was a front page of the San Diego Union from Sunday morning, Sept. 1, 1929, with the headline “Ocean Beach scores by fast growth,” accompanied by an artist’s rendering of architect Harry Pierce’s design for Point Loma Methodist Church. A program from the cornerstone laying a week later also was preserved. The church extended “a cordial invitation … to any unchurched folk, and especially to old Methodists, to come and unite with us.” Both the newspaper and the program are in a rather charmingly crumpled condition.

Also stashed away was a list of more than 80 early church members and 16 Sunday school children from that Sunday in 1929. Some pertinent excerpts from the minutes of board of trustees meetings from several previous months also were saved, as was a handwritten note from founding pastor H.A. McPheeters. A September 1929 roster of the brethren of the Peninsula Masonic Lodge No. 620 also was preserved. The Rev. McPheeters was a member.

Other, more contemporary memorabilia also was present. There were two partial church histories and several midcentury church publications.

The original time capsule evidently had been opened one Tuesday morning in March 1978 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the church “with the permission of the trustees,” according to 50th Anniversary Committee chairman Edmond Davis. Davis was joined that morning by stonemason Frank McAuley, church pastor Willard “Buzz” Stevens, Al Vallin, Wanda Gordon and Keith Pecha.

“After a little difficulty,” Davis recalled, “we found a time capsule in the form of a metal pipe about 15 inches long and 3 inches around, capped on both ends.” Inside were the items listed above.

The metal pipe was replaced with the steel box.

In a 50th-anniversary program from Oct. 15, 1978, Pastor Stevens declared that “if every church left 50 years of love on this earth the way this church has, the Kingdom of Heaven would be right around the corner.”

The Rev. Willard “Buzz” Stevens, founding pastor H.A. McPheeters and 50th Anniversary Committee chairman Edmond Davis load a new time capsule following the 50th-anniversary celebration of Ocean Beach’s Methodist church in 1978. This photo was found in the time capsule.
(Provided by Eric DuVall)

Church Row

The early Ocean Beach churches moved around quite a bit, as you will see, and even the buildings themselves were not what you would characterize as strictly stationary. OB’s first churches, the old Union Church and the Baptist church, both started in tents.

In “Beach Town,” Ruth Varney Held tells us that Union Church started in a tent near the foot of Newport Avenue. According to Ruth: “As with all small churches, there were money troubles. When the Union Church leaders agreed to accept help from the Congregationalists and change their name to Union Congregational Church, it was too much for the Baptists. They pulled out and started their own church.”

The Baptists purchased the property on the northeast corner of Santa Monica Avenue and DeFoe Street (later Sunset Cliffs Boulevard) in 1914, across from Ocean Beach Elementary School. They remain there today. First Baptist is now known as OB1 Church.

Also in 1914, Union Church moved into a redwood building on Santa Monica Avenue, across the street from the current Ocean Beach post office. That building was soon moved to the current location of the Ocean Beach Library. Make a mental note of that because it will figure in our story presently, but after 15 years the little building was moved to the elementary school property, where it served as a cafeteria for 16 years. That building is still very much in use in Ocean Beach, but you will have to ponder for a few more paragraphs what it is today, unless you already know.

The only corner of Santa Monica and DeFoe that we haven’t considered was soon to be the home of the new OB Catholic church, Sacred Heart. The Catholics built a redwood church with a bell tower on the northwest corner. In 1923, Sacred Heart bought the property on the northeast corner of Saratoga and DeFoe and moved the church to that location, where it was later replaced by the current church we know as Sacred Heart.

After meeting for several years in the homes of congregation members, Holy Trinity Episcopal Mission broke ground on the corner of Brighton Avenue and DeFoe in 1925. The Holy Trinity property has been home to the offices of the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego since 2009.

The Methodist church, formed in 1928, was originally known as Ocean Beach Community Church and met in the former Congregational Church (on the current library location) for a few months after the Congregationalists moved out of OB and before that building was moved across the street.

A topic for the sermon there on April 29, 1928, was, no kidding, “the community’s need for adequate churches.”

Incorporated in late 1928 as Point Loma Methodist Episcopal Church, the group met briefly in the Masonic Lodge, which was then on lower Newport Avenue. The church then met in the Merry-Go-Round Building at the foot of Santa Monica Avenue for about a year and a half. Early records found in the time capsule indicate that the rent for the Merry-Go-Round Building was $20 a month.

The Methodist congregation, under the direction of the Rev. McPheeters, was in the market for a home of its own and considered property on the southwest corner of Ebers Street and Narragansett Avenue and on the southwest corner of Ebers and Saratoga. The final decision was to purchase the current Saratoga Avenue property — for $2,500 — squarely in the middle of what was already known as Church Row.

The ceremony for the laying of the cornerstone was quite an event by 1920s OB standards. According to church records, “the entire congregation turned out for the ceremony. The city fathers had the block roped off from traffic, and seats were placed in the street, having been brought over from the Merry-Go-Round Building which was then the church home. These were augmented by planks on nail kegs.”

Entertainment was provided by the Bungalow Orchestra, along with the cornet duo Punches and Chapelle and a ladies quartet from San Diego. Speakers included Methodist District Superintendent Frank Linder and San Diego Mayor Harry Clark.

The congregation raised $3,000 for the first phase of construction and took out a loan for an additional $8,000 from OB’s Bank of Italy, secured by the trust deed to the new church property.

The first service in the new church was recorded as Dec. 1, 1929. But the short-term economic future for not only the Point Loma Methodists but for just about everyone everywhere was dire indeed. The late-1929 stock market crash and subsequent worldwide depression would usher in a decade of tough economic times across the board.

The 1940s and ‘50s were salad years for Point Loma Methodist Church, but the late ‘60s were difficult. The church’s coffeehouse and attempt at a teen drop-in center, known as The In-Between (in between the church and the beach), became a lightning rod for controversy and caused a schism in the congregation.

Hope and positivity had returned to the Methodist church by the 50th-anniversary celebration, and one interesting artifact in the time capsule is an envelope containing “ashes of the mortgage burned on Oct. 15, 1978.”

Bill and Barbara Joyce were married at Point Loma Methodist Church in 1968 and have been parishioners ever since. Bill told me that his favorite memories of the church include the 12 years he spent as a youth group leader for what was called the MYF (Methodist Youth Fellowship).

“That was a strong, active and fun group,” he said. “It started small, but after awhile we had up to 70 unchurched kids from the OB community showing up. We had weekly get-togethers, sang folk songs, went camping. … We used to raise funds at the street fair before it got so commercialized.”

Bill and Barbara Joyce and the Rev. Brittany Hanlin hold a portion of the Methodist church’s former cornerstone.
(Provided by Bill Joyce)

Bill says he still hears from some of the former youth group members, and he says the couple are deeply saddened by the Methodists leaving Ocean Beach.

What the future holds for the parcel remains a mystery. Will it be sold outright? Would another congregation be able to rent the sanctuary and the parish hall? Can an arrangement be worked out that would keep it functioning as the excellent community center it has become? Stay tuned.

So what happened to that sturdy little redwood building that seemed to move so quickly around the neighborhood in the first half of the last century? The one that Ruth tells us housed the Union Congregationalists, the OB Community Methodist–Episcopals and the elementary school cafeteria?

If you must know, it was moved again to the corner of Muir Avenue and Bacon Street and since 1944 has been home to the Ocean Beach Woman’s Club.

With apologies to Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story.

Eric DuVall is president of the Ocean Beach Historical Society. Membership in OBHS, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is $25 annually. The Historical Society will kick off the 30th year of its free monthly lecture series at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 18, at Water’s Edge Faith Community, 1984 Sunset Cliffs Blvd. Ocean Beach photographer Randy Dible will present a program of his photos and those of his grandfather Robert Thompson. Visit obhistory.org.