ABOUT US

Learn more about First Church's community, our history, and mission, and meet the church leaders.

We hope you will join us. Service is Sunday at 10 AM.

2100 J Street

Sacramento, CA 95816

Our Values

We are a faith community that is deeply rooted in the values of Jesus.

We are a community passionately committed:

To the celebration of God and life;

To the call for justice;

To promote a thoughtful, maturing adult spirituality;

To engage young people in a journey of faith;

To support the arts and enhance appreciation of life;

To be a family for persons of all sexual and affectional orientations and gender identities;

To embrace diversity across spiritual, racial, cultural, generational, or economic lines.

VISION

We are a Faith Community that shares a Vision of itself as a creative, loving, welcoming, Christ-centered, and Justice-focused faith community.

MISSION

We are a Faith Community that is clear about its Mission to make God’s Love real in our congregations, in our wider community and in our world.

Our History

Sacramento First United Methodist Church was one of the first churches to be built in the Sacramento area back in the mid 1800s when California was seeking statehood. Here is an artist rendition of the various buildings the church was housed in over the years.

The following watercolors of the various buildings used by the Methodists over the years were painted in 1984 by life long Methodist Frances Riemer Burt.

Burt moved to Sacramento from a southern Wisconsin farming community in 1954 and brought her family to worship at the largest Methodist church in Sacramento at the time. Over the years, she taught Sunday School, organized art shows and displays, served on or chaired various commissions, wrote and produced plays and was an active member of the United Methodist Women.

In the beginning ...

It began on Sunday, October 28, 1849. On that day Isaac Owen, our first pastor, preached his sermon under a large oak tree at 3rd and L streets. The following Sunday, November 4, more than 70 people attended worship in the new Baltimore Chapel, a prefabricated building which had been assembled on the southeast corner of 7th and L streets on a lot which had been donated by John Sutter. First United Methodist Church became the third protestant church in Sacramento, having been preceded only by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (August 16, 1849) and Pioneer Congregational Church (September 16, 1849}.

In 2024 First United Methodist Church will celebrate the 175th Anniversary of our founding. Several events are being planned for the observation of this milestone year.