AMEs to resurrect work at Kingsville site

Kingsville Methodists celebrated a resurrection March 9—two weeks before Easter.
Representatives of the Southwest Texas Conference transferred the former Scott’s Chapel UMC property to neighboring St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church. Scott’s Chapel closed July 1 after 96 years of ministry.
The 114-member AME congregation plans to return active community outreach ministries to the site at South Second and Warren streets, said Pastor Idotha Battle. The St. Paul congregation will continue to worship in its current building a block away on Warren Street.
“From death will come new life,” said the Rev. Larry Howard, McAllen District superintendent, during a brief deed-transfer ceremony. “The gift from the Southwest Texas Conference to St. Paul AME Church will bring forth even more wondrous things in the name of the Gospel.”
Howard declared the property no longer a United Methodist church and transferred it to St. Paul “for all honorable uses.” He gave a warranty deed to the Rev. Ida Keener, presiding elder of the AME Southwest Texas Conference.
“We will carry on your legacy,” Keener said. “Another (Methodist) brother or sister is taking on this assignment. Life is like a relay race. You have passed the baton to us.”
Battle called the gift of the Scott’s Chapel property an “awesome opportunity” for her 87-year-old congregation. She said she’d like to see a youth learning center at the site.
The current Scott’s Chapel building was built in 1908 at Fourth and Kleberg Streets for what is now First UMC. When that congregation outgrew the structure in 1949, church members gave the building to Scott’s Chapel and had it moved to South Second Street.
A brick veneer was added in 1962.
Scott’s Chapel traced its roots to at least 1911. That’s when the segregated West Texas Conference of the former Methodist Episcopal Church—the northern branch of today’s United Methodist Church—sent its first pastor to Kingsville. By 1912 the new congregation had a church building.
When Scott’s Chapel received the former First Methodist Church building in 1949, the congregation had more than 100 members. The number gradually declined over the next half century. Scott’s Chapel had two members when it closed.
The historically black African Methodist Episcopal Church broke away from the northern Methodist Episcopal Church in 1787 following an incident of racial discrimination.