Langley United Methodist Church marks 125 years of faith and inclusion
Published 1:30 am Friday, May 15, 2026
By KATE POSS
Special to The Record
Everyday people are who you meet at the Langley United Methodist Church or LUMC. Those who visit may wind up feeling better after immersion in the community’s genuine atmosphere of inclusiveness, dedication to social justice and love of music.
“As part of the United Methodist denomination, we are members of a larger faith community that believes in letting people think for themselves as they balance the spiritual with the ethical,” notes the LUMC webpage. “If you have a history with Methodism or other mainstream denominations, you’ll find a familiarity here that is comfortable for you. And if you’ve given up on organized religion, as many of us have at some point, you’ll find like-minded people all around you.”
The community celebrates its 125th year since the church was built in 1909, and a number of events are planned throughout May.
One celebration featured a packed-house dinner May 9 followed by a talent show featuring 32 acts — including a number of karaoke sing-alongs put on by the church community.
On May 17, Bishop Rev. Cedrick Bridgeforth — who oversees the Northwest Area including Oregon, Idaho, Alaska and Washington — will lead a celebratory service at 10 a.m., followed by a reception in his honor. According to web descriptions, Bridgeforth “was elected bishop by the Western Jurisdictional Conference in November 2022. He is the first openly gay African American man to be elected bishop in the United Methodist Church.”
One everyday kind of woman is Barbara MacCallum, a retired teacher from Alaska, who runs a Langley bed and breakfast. She grew up watching a church service on TV each Sunday, but that changed a year ago. She attended a service after her guests said they were going to honor their niece, a long-time Langley piano teacher, for her service of 50 years at LUMC.
“Her aunt and uncle came to stay with me,” MacCallum recalled. “We all went to church. They got into the family view. I sat in the back of the church. They gave her a standing ovation. I liked the pastor so much, I’ve never stopped going there. I enjoy it immensely. He’s funny. So casual. He teases, which is fun. He is delightful.”
Pastor John Tucker is funny and entertaining and, for many, makes the world beyond feel a little better.
“I’ve tried my hand at stand up comedy,” Tucker said, laughing. “I love watching it. I get to crack jokes in my sermons so I get to do standup. I’ve always enjoyed doing creative stuff in worship. It’s great to have a church willing to partner in doing that.”
Tucker and his wife Linda, pastor at the Oak Harbor First United Methodist Church, moved to Whidbey Island in July 2024. The couple arrived after John Tucker served for eight years as district superintendent of the Crater Lake District, overseeing about 40 churches in southern Oregon. Linda Tucker served as pastor at one of the local churches. When their time of service came to an end, they learned there was a chance to pastor a pair of churches on Whidbey Island.
Tucker said he felt welcome at LUMC and fit in from the start. By coincidence, he and Bishop Rev. Bridgeforth are from the same town in Alabama.
“The wonderful thing about this church is that it has been a reconciling congregation since 2008,” said Tucker. “We specifically are welcoming to the LGBTQ community. The movement comes from within the Methodist Church and is widespread in the greater Northwest area.”
A reconciling congregation is one that votes specifically on inclusion of LGBTQ people, supports their marriage, and the ordination of LGBTQ ministers within the church.
Sunday’s speaker, Bishop Rev. Bridgeforth, for instance, is married to Christopher Hucks-Ortiz, according to Bridgeforth’s bio page. His spouse is a public health and research professional who works in the domestic and global fields of infectious disease, including HIV. Bridgeforth is the author of the book “Alabama Grandson: A Black, Gay Minister’s Passage out of Hiding.”
Rumblings about starting a Methodist Church in Langley began as early as the end of the 19th century.
“In 1899, when Langley was just eight years old, folks wanted a church in town. They built a building on First Street. After two years of organizing, on Aug 11, 1901, 14 people petitioned the Methodist conference to be recognized as a Methodist church,” a LUMC press release notes.
But a fire destroyed the first building. Then, along came Brother Mac, who, according to church lore, was a “stalwart, circuit-walking minister who had a history of helping floundering churches.”
Maybe it was a miracle, but Brother Mac organized the purchase of property at Third and Anthes streets, raised funds and built a new church, dedicated on Sept. 13, 1909. The cost was $1,800. There was an outhouse in the back. He left for a while and returned in 1915 as pastor and died in 1936, buried in the Langley Woodmen Cemetery.
Presenting his own poetic creation about the church’s history was Rod Stallman, who spoke as part of the talent show lineup on May 9. Imagining a past that could have been true, he opened his talk by recalling “being” in the church basement where boxes of old hymnals that “hadn’t seen a Sunday since John Tucker was born.” Tucked behind a loose board, Stallman “discovered” an oilskin bundle containing a “ledger dating back to 1901.” While the ledger mostly recorded costs and numbers, he found what looked like a letter to the future.
“It’s written in a hand that’s gone now, but the ink felt like it was still drying,” said Stallman, reading the words penned from his imagination: “…Thinking of how we began — not with stone, but with a promise carried on horseback through the mud of 1901. It’s a strange thing, planting a seed and knowing you won’t be the one to rest in the shade of its branches. Jacob’s flowering cherry trees are still young on Third Street, and Brother Mac, I wager … is measuring the lot at Anthes with a vision in his eyes of a sanctuary with cedar siding and a bell that rings across the rooftops to the wharf.”
Jacob Anthes was the founder of Langley in 1890.
The church did stretch its arms over the years, being home to a pilot program now in its 32nd year, Hearts & Hammers of South Whidbey, founded by the late Lynn Willeford. She started the program after learning that women in her church needed help with home repair and gardening. This year’s event in early May found more than 400 volunteers lending a hand to the homes and gardens of more than 30 neighbors.
LUMC hosts an Open Table soup kitchen ministry Mondays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Downstairs, during the week, it hosts the HUB after school program for middle and high school students. HUB offers a safe environment for young people, including art, activities and food. Other programs held at the church include weekly Al-Anon Family group meetings Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m.
The church’s embrace found a young Helen Price Johnson, a former Island County Commissioner, now an active grandmother who continues to be engaged with the LUMC community.
Attending the May 9 dinner and talent show, Price Johnson recalled being raised by a single mom who dropped her and her siblings off at Sunday services in the late 1960s so their mom could take a break and have breakfast with her mother. The young girl took Sunday School classes with Diane Fraser, and later, both women served as youth leaders until the COVID pandemic. The women have remained friends who might be seen swimming during the summer at Goss Lake.
Fraser recalled the support she and her young family received when they first moved to South Whidbey and ran Ken’s Korner in Clinton.
“Our store burned down, and the church brought us some food,” Fraser said. “My husband said I should go to the church. They asked me to teach Sunday School, which I did until COVID. I raised my two grandkids here.”
Pastor Tucker, meanwhile, recalled being raised in an evangelical Southern Baptist church while growing up in Alabama.
“Dad — he’s still alive at 85 — was our church music director,” Tucker said. “He can’t see now, but knows all the music still. I have a brother Tim, who is three years younger than me. He’s a full time professional musician. When he and I are together we do pretty good.”
Tucker said he’s recorded more than 300 songs on Spotify but is just learning how to play instruments. In the past couple of months, he’s been taking ukulele lessons with Dave Licastro at Create Space. Tucker debuted on ukulele at the May 9 talent show, singing two original songs: “They Tell Me” and “Tequila Sheila.”
Saying it was in the cards for him to become a pastor “growing up in such a religious family,” he attended a Southern Baptist college studying philosophy and became an atheist.
“Fundamentalism and atheism you know, are both sides of the same coin, both rely on literal interpretations,” Tucker said.
Finding his way back to a faith that appealed to his ethos, Tucker read works by feminist and Black theologians. He was influenced by the works of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and found the fire in his belly to write and publish “Zero Theology: Escaping Belief through Catch-22s” in 2019. His faith nowadays is one that creates a sense of liberation, one that appeals to folks who have lost faith in their faith and look to find a way back.
Now, Tucker said he is the happiest he’s been in his life.
“I feel quite at home. I feel I’m me,” he said. “It’s been glorious. Linda and I are very happy to live here. If we have our way, we’ll stay. This is a church worth talking about. We gather because we have found values in common. This is an excellent church for people traumatized before by the Christian faith. This is a great place for people who want to work that out.”
Nowadays Tucker said United Methodists are concerned about whether congregations are robust and healthy, whether the church is relevant to the needs of a community.
“The church stands for strong and important things,” he said. “Social justice. We laugh, we sing. We take things seriously; we don’t take ourselves seriously. When you walk into a place like ours you can tell pretty quick where we’re at. You pick up the vibes. You have to walk by the rainbow flag.”
To learn more about the Langley United Methodist Church, visit langleyumc.org. Church services can be watched on Youtube.
