Wesley United Methodist Church

Part 5: The Cathedrals of Downtown Minneapolis

Jul 25, 2022

This is part 5 of a multi-part series.

My second stop on day two of my cathedral tour was the Wesley United Methodist Church, located next to the Minneapolis Convention Center. The church became an historic landmark in 1985, and ceased being a Methodist church in the 21st century. In 2008, the church website was redirected to a website for booking weddings. The wedding site was down by 2014, and Substance Church moved in on a rent-to-own basis in 2016. Substance Church is a young, fast-growing Evangelical church, largely targeting the younger generations, with four locations in the Twin Cities area.

After taking in the building from the outside, I found the front door, which was locked. I rang the video doorbell, but there was no answer. I tried coming back the next day. Still no answer. So I only have pictures of this church from the outside. I’m considering finding my way inside by attending a service, or by calling them up and asking for an interview and a tour. In the meantime, I found some pictures of the interior on the old Wesley United website, and a couple on the Substance website as well. I think I can make out the beautiful organ in the background of one of the Substance pictures, and I’m grateful they have preserved it.

The replacement of a Methodist congregation with a contemporary Evangelical congregation is a reflection on the trends in Christianity over the last few decades. You might guess that Christianity as whole is on a downward trend in America, and you would be right, but the story is complicated. Statista shows Catholicism holding steady in recent decades, with Protestantism taking a huge drop, and significant gains in their “Christian (non-specific)” category. It’s not clear to me where contemporary Evangelicals would fall here, but I would guess they would fall into both the Protestant and non-specific categories. A study from Christianity Today shows Evangelicalism holding steady, but “mainline Protestant” dropping precipitously.

I can only speculate as to the causes behind these trends. It’s possible that Christianity is becoming less popular with liberals, but not so with Evangelicals, which tend to be more conservative. Catholics are about as liberal as mainline Protestants, but perhaps the lack of a drop-off in Catholicism is due to immigration.

Perhaps these contemporary Evangelical churches have something to offer people that the older churches don’t. I don’t think it is about religious belief, as the Substance beliefs are pretty much mainstream Christian beliefs. The only differentiating point I see here is, “Sexuality is to be shared in the context of holy matrimony between one man, born as a man, and one woman, born as a woman,” which is in line with Catholic beliefs, but contrasts pretty strongly with the more liberal positions on sexuality and marriage found in most mainline Protestant churches today.

My feeling is what these churches have to offer is a deep sense of community that is harder and harder to find in our modern, disconnected lives. Churches like Substance use methods like the cell church where, beyond just coming to Sunday service, people gather regularly in smaller cell groups. I would really like to explore this deeper in some direct way, but my beliefs about Christ and religion are at such odds with traditional Christian belief, that I would probably feel a little uncomfortable even just attending a service.

Anyway, pictures! It’s a beautiful building. I’m sorry I only have pictures from the outside.