Free Methodist Church Offers ‘Welcoming’ Services in Wheeler

By William Meiners
Herald Staff Writer
For nearly 135 years, the Free Methodist Church has offered ministerial services in Wheeler Township. The latest pastor to carry on that tradition is Reverend Lyle McCoon Jr., who is settling into his position after moving to Gratiot County about a month ago.
McCoon, along with his wife Dawn, spent the last 13 years at a Free Methodist church in Indianapolis, close enough to the downtown area to see the longtime Sunday home of Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts. Both Michigan natives, the couple has moved north and closer to the home of two sets of aging parents with “numerous health issues,” he said.
“My wife graduated from Bullock Creek High School and her parents still live in Midland,” McCoon said. “So this move and church work out very nicely as we’re only 20 minutes away from her parents and not that far from mine in Waterford.”
With a home in Breckenridge, the McCoons are getting to know people and have attended a community yard sale. “It’s a beautiful thing to get to sit on the porch and enjoy the neighbors and the evenings,” said McCoon, noting one of the true pleasures offered by Michigan summers. “I’m also working parttime at the Dollar General store and getting to meet some people that way.”
In the pulpit of a church with a small congregation, McCoon said several factors, including a downsizing village, fewer people practicing their faith, and the pandemic, have kept people away from houses of worship. In fact coinciding with COVID-19, some who began using streaming services still go to church from their living rooms.
Part of meeting new people, McCoon reported, is simply about building relationships. “If they decide they want to check out the church, that’s awesome,” he said.
Dawn, who is still able to work remotely with her Indianapolis-based accounting firm, has brought in cousins throughout mid-Michigan to fill some seats for Sunday services. They offer Sunday school at 9:30 a.m. and a worship service at 10:45. Additionally, they host a prayer meeting on Wednesdays.
Reverend McCoon is well aware of the history of the church, that’s new to him in Wheeler, and knowledgeable of the various denominations of Methodism. “The current church we’re in is 75 years old this year, so it started in 1948,” he said. “That was actually a merger of two other churches that go back to 1889.”
Back then, just a decade before the turn of the 20th century, with a Free Methodist church in North Wheeler, along with another in Lafayette Township, the decision was made to split the difference, and build a church in 1948 in the heart of Wheeler. Around the time of the Civil War, the Free Methodists broke off from the “bigger Methodist body over issues concerning slavery,” McCoon said.
These days you may need a scorecard and a laundry list of issues to keep track of all the denominations of Methodists. Though McCoon describes the Free Methodists in Wheeler as “very conservative, yet welcoming.”
Anyone looking to sample a sermon can find one on Facebook. Or you can check them out in person on Sunday by visiting 8121 North Wheeler Road. They remain, McCoon noted, the lone active church in the Village of Wheeler.