Methodist activity in this area began after 1820, when the Tennessee Conference authorized work among the Cherokees of the Hiwassee District and established the Hiwassee Circuit with Thomas Paine as pastor. A church southwest of present-day Decatur had been established by 1827, and another early congregation, Union Grove Methodist Church, was located about 1.5 miles west of the present courthouse site. About the time Decatur was established in 1837, the Union Grove congregation moved to the new town and reorganized as Decatur Methodist Church. The core of the current building was erected in 1857, with the entrance originally on the east side, where the large windows are now, and the pulpit on the west side. In 1930, five classrooms were added to the west side of the building. The congregation's earliest written records date from 1858. At first the church belonged to the Tennessee Methodist Conference, organized in 1812, and after 1824 it became part of the newly organized Holston Methodist Conference. In 1845, the Methodist Episcopal Church South was formed in opposition to the growing abolitionary position of the national Methodist body, and the Decatur church remained in that group until the 1939 union of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Methodist Protestant Church created The Methodist Church. In 1968, another reorganization placed the church in The United Methodist Church. From its incorporation, the church was part of the multi-church Decatur Circuit, became a station church in 1952, then joined the Decatur-Concord Charge in the 1970s, and now belongs to the Meigs County United Methodist Parish, which includes nine United Methodist churches in the county.