A church that was heavily damaged in a lightning strike last summer will not reopen.

The dwindling congregation of Mount Vernon United Methodist Church, 801 W. 33rd St., has agreed to merge with Good Shepherd UMC, 3800 Roland Ave.

Mount Vernon is one of two Methodist churches the Hampden community is likely to lose. Negotiations are under way to close Aldersgate UMC, 42nd Street and Falls Road, and to merge its congregation with Mt. Washington UMC, which is part of the Hampden parish within the Baltimore-Washington Methodist Conference.

The merging of Mount Vernon and Good Shepherd isn't official but, "It's a done deal," said Betty Callahan, lay leader and treasurer of Mount Vernon. Conference officials plan to make the merger official by June 30, she said.

Thirty Mount Vernon congregants voted unanimously in April for the merger, which the conference recommended as being "in the best interests" of the church, Callahan said. She said she agreed because church membership was declining even before lightning struck the steeple Aug. 2, causing a three-alarm fire.

Athough the congregation has $2 million to rehabilitate the gutted church, it would not be worth it for so few active members, Callahan said.

"What do you do after you get it built?" she asked rhetorically.

Also last month, Aldersgate's 35 active members voted to merge with the nearly 60-member Mt. Washington, said the Rev. Mapipi Isaac Mawokomatanda, who is the pastor of both churches. He said that last year, the Aldersgate congregation voted to close the church because it was a big building and cost-prohibitive to heat and air condition for so few members.

The merger of Aldersgate and Mt. Washington is expected to become official June 25, Mawokomatanda said. He said Mt. Washington would pick up half his salary, and he would double as pastor of Overlea Chapel UMC near Northern Parkway and Belair Road.

The Rev. Robin Johnson, pastor of Mount Vernon and the larger Hampden UMC, said he will be left with the Hampden church and half his salary, because he has not been assigned to any other church.

The Aldersgate and Mt. Vernon churches are expected to be sold and the proceeds used by Good Shepherd and Mt. Washington for capital improvements, say Callahan and Mawokomatanda.

The Methodist conference's district superintendent, the Rev. C. Anthony Hunt, could not be reached to confirm the mergers.

The Hampden community has been a hotbed of Methodist churches, including two that aren't affiliated with the United Methodist conference -- First Free Methodist on Keswick Road and Church of New Hope, whose members broke from Mount Vernon UMC long before the fire.

There has been debate as to whether the area has a glut of Methodist churches.

"There's a lot of Methodist churches in Hampden, too many," Tom Kerr, 66, a long-time member of Hampden UMC, said after last year's Mount Vernon fire.

Johnson at the time disagreed, saying Aldersgate, Hampden, Mount Vernon and Good Shepherd all had strong identities and ties to the community.

"The Methodist churches were on life support -- no young people, no money coming in," Kerr said this week. "It's a shame. Where have all the churches gone, long time passing."

The closing of the churches will have an impact on their pastors. Johnson, who is on a Holy Land pilgrimage in Israel, worried about what he will be coming back to and how he will make ends meet as a part-time pastor at Hampden UMC.

Mawokomatanda said the congregation is resigned to Aldersgate merging with Mt. Washington.

"I don't want to say they're happy about it," he said. "But it is a reality."

Callahan, 79, a long-time Hampden resident, is taking the mergers in stride.

"Nobody is joining churches now," she said. "This is all over. If it was just Hampden, I would be really upset."

But she remembered an old saying when she was young, that Hampden had as many bars as churches.

"The bars have won," she said. "They're still here and we're not."

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