A Multilingual Congregation on Georgia Avenue
Hughes United Methodist Church sits at 10700 Georgia Avenue in Wheaton, Maryland, just south of the intersection with Plyers Mill Road, and the congregation that meets there is unusually wide for a single address. Services are held in English and Spanish every Sunday, a bilingual Communion service fills the sanctuary on first Sundays, and the same building hosts the Mid-County Hub, a partnership with Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services that hands out groceries and diapers to neighbors who need them. The church's self-stated mission is to reflect the face of Christ to all whom we encounter, and the building's doors swing both ways - in for worshippers and out for anyone in line for a bag of food.
Three Sunday Services, Two Languages
Worship at Hughes rotates through three expressions on Sunday morning. At 10 a.m. an English-language traditional worship celebration fills the sanctuary every week, in person and online. At 11:45 a.m. a contemporary Spanish-language worship celebration follows, held on the second through fourth Sundays (and the occasional fifth). On first Sundays the schedule shifts to a blended bilingual service at 11:15 a.m. that includes Holy Communion. Both the English and Spanish services are livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube, so a worshipper in Managua or Manassas can follow along in real time.
Sunday mornings are designed so that a family could attend together regardless of which language feels like home. Musicians and clergy lead in one sanctuary and then the next, and the building's layout - with a chapel off the second set of double doors and a fellowship foyer linking the worship spaces - makes it easy to move between services for fellowship.
The Mid-County Hub: Food on Tuesdays, Diapers by Month
Inside the same campus, Hughes operates as the Mid-County food hub for the surrounding zip codes. Every Tuesday from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. the church runs a walk-in food distribution; visitors are asked to bring a shopping bag or cart and to enter through the southern side door that faces Plyers Mill Road. The hub grew out of the church's response during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it partnered with Montgomery County to keep food flowing while sanctuaries sat empty.
A separate monthly diaper distribution supports families with infants. Sign-ups are by appointment, with proof of residency and personal identification sent to diaperhubhughesumc@gmail.com, and priority is given to a defined ring of zip codes in Wheaton, Silver Spring, Glen Echo, Bethesda, and neighboring communities. Carmen Herrera coordinates the hub, Pedro Hernandez runs the warehouse, and Josefat Montano handles driver and logistics, supported by a small staff and a stream of volunteers who pack bags on distribution day.
There is also a dedicated food-distribution track for residents sixty years of age and older, run under the church's LIFE ministry.
Hughes House Next Door
Just to the north of the sanctuary, at 10720 Georgia Avenue, stands Hughes House, a 24-unit apartment building that the church helped bring into being in the late 1990s. The building was conceived by a Land Use Task Force that Hughes formed in 1991 to study how to use an adjoining 1.5-acre parcel. After a Section 811 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and partnerships with Montgomery County, the Maryland Affordable Housing Trust, and Community Residences, Inc., the building opened in 1998 as supportive housing for adults with mental illness, intellectual disabilities, and physical disabilities. Each of the 24 one-bedroom apartments opens onto a community center with a library and a multipurpose room, and the project remains a working example of the congregation's commitment to face to face, hands on, life transforming ministries.
A Ministry Rooted in 1948
Hughes traces its history to the post-World War II expansion of Methodism into the suburbs north of Washington. In 1946 the Methodist Union purchased a parcel of land on Georgia Avenue, followed the next year by an adjoining lot with a 90-year-old farmhouse that doubled as the parsonage. On June 4, 1948, the Rev. Harold R. Lanman was appointed as pastor of the Wheaton Extension Project. The first Sunday School class met in the farmhouse on August 1, 1948, and the first worship service followed five weeks later, on September 12, 1948, under a large tent with 300 people in attendance.
The congregation worshipped in an Army barracks chapel in 1949, moved into what is now the gymnasium and Social Hall on September 13, 1953, and opened its Education Building in 1957. Twenty years after that, on September 22, 1985, the church burned the mortgage and dedicated its first sanctuary. The current sanctuary - the final unit of the master plan - had its first service on Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, with the Rev. A. Odell Osteen presiding.
The church bears the name of Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes (1866-1950), a Methodist Episcopal bishop who chaired the commission that reunited three major Methodist bodies in the United States in 1939 and who retired in Maryland after a career that took him from West Virginia to Boston, Newton Centre, Malden, and DePauw University. The choice of name was deliberate: a Methodist church that wanted to be known for grandly and terribly much gospel.
Missionaries in Five Countries
Hughes supports missionaries through the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church in several parts of the world. Dr. Belinda Forbes, a dentist and graduate of Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, serves in Nicaragua with Acción Médica Cristiana, a community health and development organization. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Dr. J. Jeffrey Hoover and Dr. Ellen Hoover teach church history and Islam at United Methodist-related universities in Mulungwishi and Katanga. Beatrice Mamawah Gbanga, a nurse and midwife, supervises the Sierra Leone Annual Conference's medical work, including KISSY Hospital and seven clinics. Mark Zimmerman, a physician who has worked in Nepal since 1986, directs the Nick Simons Institute, which trains rural health workers. Gayle Lesure, a deaconess and Church and Community Worker, serves in the Greater Clarksburg Cooperative Parish of the West Virginia Conference.
Values on the Wall
The congregation has written its calling into a single paragraph. Hughes UMC is a community of faithful disciples reflecting the face of Christ to all whom we encounter, and to undergird that mission the church names five values: Christ-centeredness, hospitality, stewardship, agape (unconditional, sacrificial love), and bold, courageous faith. Each value is spelled out in plain language - hospitality means welcoming all, civility, breaking down pre-conceived ideas about people; agape means treasuring each person like a precious gem and refusing to count the cost.
That hospitality is given a name in the congregation's Reconciling Statement. Hughes affirms that all people are equally valuable in the sight of God and welcomes everyone regardless of age, race, color, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, faith history, immigration status, marital status, family configuration, educational background, economic status, or physical or mental capability. The church commits to pursue justice, equality, and basic human rights for marginalized people and to promote a culture of love and acceptance in the congregation.
Getting Around the Building
First-time visitors can enter the campus from either Plyers Mill Road or Windham Lane, both of which feed into the main parking lot. Approaching from the front along the sidewalk, the second set of double doors opens into the chapel and the third set into the main sanctuary, with a ramp for wheelchair access just before the stairs. From the rear courtyard and its azalea garden, the leftmost sidewalk leads to the special-needs ramp - visitors ring a buzzer to be admitted, with an elevator just inside that reaches the lower level and the gym. Office hours run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, and weekday visitors enter from the rear courtyard and ring the buzzer. The entrance to Evergreen School is through the education wing just to the left of the azalea garden.
The fellowship foyer links the sanctuary and chapel upstairs and connects to the social hall, kitchen, music area, church offices, and meeting rooms on the lower level. The gym and social hall have their own entrance up and down a black wrought-iron staircase near the parking lot.
Weddings, Funerals, and the LIFE Ministry
Hughes hosts weddings and funeral services for members of the community as well as for its own congregation. Membership is not required, although members and ministries of the church are given priority when space is tight. Guest clergy and musicians must be approved by the staff, and pastoral and musical staff may also be available to officiate. Arrangements go through the business manager.
The LIFE ministry, run under the same umbrella as the food hub, is the church's ongoing outreach to adults sixty and older, with its own grocery channel. Together with the Mid-County Hub, Hughes House, the missionary support program, and the three Sunday services, it adds up to a congregation that has made the practical ministry of the wider Wheaton community as much a part of its identity as its hymns.