McKnight United Methodist Church is an average sized church with 100 to 200 active families.

We have an active youth program, a variety of outreach ministeries and a warm and friendly congregation. Membership is not skewed toward any age group.   Church attendance averages 80 to 100 per service. 

We are located in the southern part of Ross Township high on a hilltop just east of McKnight Road in the McKnight Village neighborhood. The church was founded in 1950 as McKnight Village Community Methodist Church.

This part of Ross Township began a period of rapid growth following World War II when McKnight Road was extended south from Babcock Boulevard to meet East Street coming north out of the City of Pittsburgh. The interchanges and bridges on McKnight Road at Nelson Run Road and Babcock Boulevard were built by the County of Allegheny in 1946. Just before WW II, McKnight Road was widened and paved as a four-lane dual highway from Babcock Boulevard to north of Siebert Road. This was done in 1939 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's depression recovery program Federal Works Agency Pub1ic Works Administration.

At this time, and through the 1940’s, this part of Ross Township was residential being made up mainly of small farms. Developers began putting in housing plans, especially east of McKnight Road. McKnight Village was such a plan. The first houses were built in 1947 and '48, as was the large apartment complex now known as Governor’s Ridge.

In 1949 the Methodist Church Union of the Pittsburgh Conference bought three plus acres of open ground in McKnight Village. The next year, 1950, they took title to a house at 216 Henderson Road in the Village to be used for worship and Sunday school classes and later as a parsonage. In late 1945, Bishop Lloyd C. Wicke assigned Rev. Sheldon Spangler to work with the residents of the area in establishing a new Methodist church. This was in addition to Rev. Spangler’s charge of being pastor of the North End Methodist Church three and a half miles away near Perry High School. Rev. Spangler conducted the first Sunday worship service in the house on Henderson on March l9, 1950 beginning at 9:30 a.m.