Bering Memorial United Methodist Church

The church German immigrants founded in 1848 found a second calling in Montrose. As the neighborhood's gay community grew in the 1960s and 1970s, Bering became known as a welcoming congregation, and its pastor dates its stand for LGBTQ inclusion to 1972. In the AIDS years it began a support group, then the Bering Community Service Foundation of 1987 and a dental clinic. It joined the Reconciling Ministries Network in 1991. After the United Methodist Church reaffirmed its position in 2019, members voted in April 2021 to leave and join the United Church of Christ.

What the plaque says

Bering Memorial United Methodist Church Originally known as the First German Methodist Church of Houston, this congregation was organized in 1848 by the Rev. Charles Goldberg. Most of the charter members were German immigrants, including August and Conrad Bering, two brothers who had come to Texas in 1846 with their parents. The name of the church was changed in 1911 to honor this founding family. About the same time, English was introduced into the worship services. The congregation met at Milam and McKinney streets from 1858 until 1924, when it moved to this location. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rothko Chapel — 0.3 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• The Menil Collection — 0.3 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.2 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.2 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• The Blue Bird Circle — 0.6 mi
• The Waldo Mansion — 0.7 mi
• Louis Wiltz Kemp — 0.8 mi
• Courtlandt Place — 0.9 mi