200 years and counting: Tiny Island Grove United Methodist is on the upswing, leaders say

ISLAND GROVE — Betty June Dippel's family moved to a farm home near New Berlin in 1940 when she was just 10 years old.

The first family she met at nearby Island Grove United Methodist Church was the Winklers, who had two sons, including Charles, two years her senior.

Betty and Charles attended the same one-room schoolhouse in the area. Charles graduated from high school in 1945, joined the Merchant Marines and came back to central Illinois in 1947.

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Two years later, Betty and Charles married in Hodgenville, Kentucky, but they would call New Berlin their home for the next 68 years as a couple.

Now four generations of the Winkler family attend Island Grove UMC, which celebrated its bicentennial Sunday at a packed morning service followed by an outdoor luncheon.

It is one of the oldest churches in the area, though two other United Methodist churches in the Illinois Great Rivers Conference — Murrayville UMC (1820) and Centenary UMC in Jacksonville (1821) — precede it.

Church members even had a birthday cake to mark the celebration.

"We had Sunday School at four corners of the church (then)," recalled Betty Winkler, 92. "We've tried to meet anything we've been asked to do. The church is here to help the community."

Veteran newspaper reporter Taylor Pensoneau, the chairman of the church council and a lay speaker, said tracing the history of Island Grove UMC, which is about 13 miles outside of Springfield on Old Jacksonville Road, is like riding a roller coaster.

"There have been ups and downs, mostly ups," he said. "The bicentennial is occurring as we are on a roll. Attendance is back up (after the COVID-19 pandemic), and more folks are coming in.

"This is noteworthy (because) unfortunately you see so many rural churches barely hanging on or even closing."

Average Sunday attendance is around 40 people, Pensoneau said, double the number from five or six years ago.

Island Grove UMC pastor the Rev. Linda Harrod said Sunday School services have resumed. Two years ago, the church founded a food micro pantry in New Berlin.

The church has also begun a popular "live nativity" scene with animals and church members dressed as biblical figures.

Marcia Summer makes the one hour and 45-minute drive from Washington, Illinois, once or twice a month.

Summer went to high school with Liz Pensoneau, Taylor's wife, in Greenfield.

"I love this little church, I honestly do," Summer said before the service. "The ministers do a good job. And the music. I just enjoy it. If I lived here, I would be here in this church (as a member)."

The Rev. Daniel Holland was a longtime minister and executive for the American Baptist Churches of the Great Rivers Region based in Springfield. He was assigned to a Baptist church in New Berlin, now a campus church of Central Baptist Church in Springfield, which was where he got to know Taylor Pensoneau.

"I have visions of the Rev. Peter Cartwright riding his horse through the tall grass (as part of the circuit)," Holland said.

Cartwright, a one-time political foe of Abraham Lincoln, did in fact tend to the church as a circuit-riding preacher.

The church’s official start-up date of 1822 is tied to the founding of the Island Grove Society. Then, services and religious classes were held in homes or other public buildings.

The establishment of the society came, Pensoneau said, just four years after Illinois was granted statehood.

By 1849, the church was large enough to financially support a full-time minister. In the early 1860s, construction began on the present-day sanctuary. A church hall was added later.

Guest speaker James Cornelius, the former curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, said Lincoln knew and corresponded with one of Island Grove UMC's founders, James N. Brown, who was best known for staging the first Illinois State Fair in Springfield.

Cornelius noted Island Grove UMC's surroundings at its beginning, "these trees, the crops, the cattle, these reflected Lincoln's origin.

"They are our origins," he said. "These were his people."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: 'Mostly ups': Springfield area Methodist church honors bicentennial