Taylorsville United Methodist Church in Mount Airy, Maryland, is known for the way worship and Christian education sit side by side. At 4356 Ridge Road, Sunday worship begins at 10:00 a.m., adult Sunday school classes meet at 8:45 a.m., and a children's class follows the children's sermon during worship. The congregation also preserves local history, offers Bible teaching for adults and children, carries mission and youth activities, and points neighbors toward housing, health, food, senior-care and library resources.
Sunday Worship on Ridge Road
At 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, people can worship at 4356 Ridge Road or join the service live on Facebook. Taylorsville UMC describes its faith community as welcoming to people and families, and it wants to connect with unchurched neighbors through small groups that offer chances to share faith and worship God together. The Sunday service includes a children's sermon, and the children's class follows that message.
Pastor Josh Gillen says he is passionate about preaching and teaching and sees worship and Bible study as central to the growth of a faith community. For visitors, the Sunday rhythm is straightforward: adult classes at 8:45, worship at 10:00, and children's class at about 10:15 in the Education House. General contact information is (410) 875-4101 and taylorsvilleumcmd@gmail.com. Prayer requests may be sent through the church's contact form, and directions and church information are available for the Ridge Road location.
Two Adult Classes Before Worship
Taylorsville UMC's Sunday education schedule includes two adult classes at 8:45 a.m. Adult Class 1 meets in Fellowship Hall in the church basement, with Dee Haines as its class contact. Adult Class 2 meets in the Education Building next to the church, with Steve Novick as contact. The church's education ministry also identifies Adult Bible Study and Children's Education as areas of ministry.
These classes reflect the congregation's stated emphasis on Bible study, prayer, mission and growing discipleship. Their placement before worship makes study part of the Sunday rhythm rather than a separate activity. A first-time visitor seeking Bible study before worship can find one of two 8:45 classes, meeting either in the church basement or the Education Building next door.
Pastor Josh Gillen and a Regional Ministry Role
Pastor Josh Gillen was raised in the Eldersburg area, spent most of his childhood and teen years in Baltimore, and attended Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. He studied at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., while serving a two-point charge in Milton, Delaware. After two years there and two more in Hancock, Maryland, he completed his education in 2019 and later served at Brook Hill UMC in the Frederick area. He was commissioned as an Elder in the Baltimore-Washington Conference and now serves as Taylorsville's pastor.
He has worked in varied roles, including artist and carpenter's assistant, before professional ministry. His stated priorities are preaching, teaching, gathering around the Word and developing Bible study opportunities. Gillen also describes his additional responsibility as a hub pastor, connecting with other pastors and laypeople from churches in the hub for shared ministry. He says faith communities grow stronger when people gather around the Word, deepen their relationship with God and invite others to meet God with them.
A Faith Rooted in the Word and the Holy Spirit
Taylorsville UMC calls itself a community of faith in Jesus Christ and names Bible study, prayer, mission and discipleship as central values. Its philosophy holds that God reveals himself through the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ; the Word written in Holy Scripture; and the Word proclaimed. It affirms that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, and that his life, death and resurrection provided redemption for the world.
The church also affirms the Holy Spirit as an active, real presence of God in the world. Its statement of philosophy says that God chooses people first and that accepting God as part of life brings hope for today, opportunity for real change and a promise of tomorrow. Taylorsville UMC prays that every person will know Jesus Christ, have a personal relationship with him and grow in discipleship. The congregation connects small groups, worship and education with its aim of reaching unchurched neighbors.
Education for Adults and Children
Taylorsville's education ministry reaches beyond Sunday classrooms. Adult Class 1, Adult Class 2, Adult Bible Study and Children's Education are named alongside the regular Sunday classes. The church maintains a TaylorsvilleUMC YouTube channel with sermons, children's messages and worship videos. A second YouTube channel, The Concept and Nature of God, carries video presentations on God, while discussion-group videos and educational articles extend the church's teaching into online conversation. The church has also developed an Advent study for congregational learning.
The church combines live worship, in-person classes and recorded lessons. Children hear a message during Sunday worship and then gather for their class in the Education House. Adults can join a scheduled Sunday class or follow a recorded message at home. Regular newsletters carry church information and educational material, helping connect the congregation's year-round activity with its weekly gatherings.
A Deep Bible Study Curriculum
Taylorsville's Bible teaching includes a preserved 13-lesson Sunday school curriculum on Deuteronomy. It moves through a condensed timeline of historic Israel and Judah, Jewish law in the time of Yehoshuah, the Shema, responsibility, listening, humility, memory, love, destiny and education. Later lessons connect Scripture with Scotland, America, freedom, virtue, dignity, insecurity and joy, then turn to government, prophets, monarchy, the environment, Jonah and Jewish concepts of salvation.
The closing lessons address rehabilitation, hate, animal welfare, history and memory, moral growth and sin. A separate resource, What Was Paul's Gospel, invites further examination of Paul's message. The curriculum places historic, theological and ethical questions within the Bible-study emphasis that defines much of the church's educational life.
Studying the Shroud of Turin with Care
Taylorsville's educational collection includes an extensive treatment of the Shroud of Turin. Jeffrey L. Taylor, Ph.D., who specializes in materials characterization through molecular spectroscopy and is particularly interested in fluorescence spectroscopy, writes that modern science cannot prove the Shroud was Jesus's burial cloth. He also says no theory explains all of the image's properties and that researchers have not reproduced an image with identical properties. Taylor wants the subject presented in a balanced way, noting that sensationalist and biased accounts occur on both sides of the debate.
Taylor recounts serving as a minor spectroscopy consultant in 1979 when the Vatican permitted the first scientific research on the Shroud. He discusses the old faint-scorch theory, which proposed that a hot metal statue wrapped in linen could create a faint, three-dimensional, photo-negative image. Scorched fabric produces fluorescent chemical compounds, but Taylor says the Shroud's image has no corresponding fluorescent signature, which ruled out that explanation in his account.
The collection also presents research by Dr. John Jackson, a physicist and leader in the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado. Jackson led a 40-person team of international scientists to Turin in 1978, where they examined the Shroud for nearly a week under the auspices of the Turin Shroud Research Project. Taylor's slide presentation and Jackson's summary and fact sheet are included in the collection. The result is a distinctive educational resource that treats the Shroud as a continuing question at the intersection of science, history and Christian faith.
An Archive of Taylorsville's Church Life
Taylorsville UMC maintains a historical archive assembled and curated through extensive work by Steve Bittner. Its collection includes historical church documents, early pictures of Taylorsville UMC and the surrounding community from the 1800s through 1990, and photographs of a church renovation carried out from 1997 to 1999. These images and records connect the congregation's history with the life of its community.
The church also keeps sermon videos from 2018 and early 2019. Titles show a recurring emphasis on prayer, intercession, thanks, mission and the life of faith, including messages such as Time for Prayer, The Grateful Heart and Mission Possible. A separate virtual-worship collection preserves Easter, Maundy Thursday and Pentecost services from the pandemic era, including a message by Bishop Easterling. Together, these recordings give visitors a view of the preaching and prayer that have shaped the congregation's worship life.
Mission, Youth and Local Resource Connections
Photographs document a mission trip to North Carolina, Vacation Bible School and a Skycroft youth retreat that included zip lining. Mission and youth are therefore represented alongside worship and education in the church's photographic record. Taylorsville UMC also provides online links to a broad set of community resources: Mt Airy Net, Assisted Living Maryland, The Shepherd's Staff, Carroll County food and meal services, the Humane Society for Carroll County, Memory Care in Maryland, Carroll County Housing, Access Carroll Health and the Carroll County Library.
Together, these connections cover practical areas such as housing, health care, food assistance, senior support, memory care, animal welfare and library services. Taylorsville UMC does not present these organizations as programs of its own; it provides a way for people to identify resources for different needs. This outward-facing set of connections sits alongside the congregation's stated commitment to mission and to connecting with unchurched neighbors through small groups.
Giving and Staying in Touch
Taylorsville UMC offers secure online giving through Vanco Faith for tithes, offerings and donations. The church also participates as an AmazonSmile charity, with 0.5 percent of eligible AmazonSmile purchases donated to the congregation. General contact information is (410) 875-4101 and taylorsvilleumcmd@gmail.com, while the church also maintains a newsletter mailing list and a form for prayer requests.
At its center, Taylorsville United Methodist Church remains a 10:00 a.m. Sunday congregation with learning before and during worship, a pastoral emphasis on the Word, a deliberate approach to Bible study, and a record of reaching beyond its own walls through mission, youth activities, resource connections and digital teaching.