The North Danvers Mennonite Church is celebrating its 175th birthday, making it just 20 years younger than the county it stands in. The congregation is rolling out the proverbial red carpet for a full weekend of festivities.
"There are churches that are older in McLean County than this congregation, but to be this long on the same site is unusual," said Pastor Brian Johnson, who joined the church in 2015.
While the church and its congregation may look different today, it still largely operates in the same way: hosting Sunday services, gathering for fellowship and sending members out for disaster relief.
Johnson said he's been told North Danvers is the oldest McLean County congregation which continues to meet on the same land, in the same building. The church was spurred by the first Mennonite family to settle in Illinois around 1830.
“This was the first Mennonite congregation west of Ohio. Many of the Mennonite congregations in this area were planted out of this congregation. The term that's used for it is 'mother church.' It became a planting organization. And there are still several of those churches around throughout the area,” Johnson said. "Some of them don't continue to have the name 'Mennonite.'"
The historic roots of the Mennonite church run deep in Bloomington-Normal. Johnson said congregations cropped up about every five miles — a feasible distance by horse and buggy in Illinois winters. There are current congregations in Carlock and Normal. Nurse training at the Mennonite Sanitarium Training School founded in 1919 was the antecedent for Illinois State University's Mennonite College of Nursing, a project of the North Danvers congregation, Johnson said. The school was umbrellaed under Mennonite Hospital, which merged with Brokaw Hospital in the 1980s—now operated by Carle Health under the combined BroMenn Medical Center name.
Honoring tradition, embracing change
Betty Yoder Zook's roots in the church run deep. She has been part of the church since birth in 1940 and her family tree traces back to the church's very first service.
In 1853, Jonathan Yoder built a meeting house for his Amish congregation, which previously gathered in private homes. By 1872, they'd outgrown it and Yoder, with Johnathan Stuckey, built a new, larger meeting house. The current church is the same building, though it looks very different today.
Prior to a few renovations, the meeting house had separate entrances for men and women. A partition separating the sexes during church services was removed in 1919, but men and women remained split down the middle in the pews.
“My father was born here in this church and always stayed with it," Zook said. "And when he and mother got married, she found out that the men sit on one side of the church and the women on the other."
Her mother, a trail-blazing Protestant, wasn't having it. She sat with her husband.
"It just happened that there were several other wives who were from the Presbyterian church also, and they thought that was a pretty good idea, so they started doing it too," said Zook.
It's one of several such changes throughout the church's nearly two century history, including aesthetic ones. The original white clapboard building was reinforced with brick. Stained glass windows and a raked floor improving the sightlines in the back rows of pews were a controversial decision at the time, adding artifice and theatricality to a church that would typically be unadorned.
Zook said the church was "much stricter" when she was a child.
"They didn't really have a list of rules or anything, but you know what was approved and what wasn't approved to do," she said. "That took quite awhile to work it's way to the modern day."
Zook said congregants "have to have a broad mind" and embrace change.
"We've found that out that you can't be closed to changes, and I think our church has come a long way with that," Zook said.
'Doing things differently'
Johnson said Joseph Stuckey was similarly a catalyst for "doing things differently" in Anabaptist faith traditions, which includes Amish and Mennonites.
"Joseph Stuckey had a member of his congregation who was a poet, and he published a poem that was universalist in nature. What that means is, basically, salvation comes to all people," Johnson said. "There were other bishops in the area who wanted Joseph Stuckey to excommunicate this member over this poem and Joseph Stuckey refused."
His reason, Johnson said, was that cutting off a fellow believer would prevent Stuckey from having any influence on him.
"What ended up happening is he got excommunicated," said Johnson, leading Stuckey to gather congregations in his own way.
"He sort of brought us into a new era," Zook said.
"It wasn't about wearing hats. He was very much more concerned about relationships," Johnson said.
One thing that hasn't changed, Johnson said, is the congregation's commitment to service. Beyond the early hospitals and schools they established, North Danvers parishioners volunteer with the area's food pantry and attend mission trips assisting with disaster relief, most recently following floods in eastern Kentucky. Locally, church members built a wheelchair ramp and accessible sidewalk in Bloomington. Missionaries have worked abroad as well.
"Service is really a big part of what it means to be a Mennonite," Johnson said.
All are invited
This 175th anniversary milestone for the church is cause for celebration, and three days of it are in store for anyone looking to join in.
On Friday, Sept. 11, the church has a dinner planned at 6:30 p.m. and a speaker at 7:30 p.m. Saturday there is a church service from 9-11 a.m. followed by a reunion and celebration from 2-5 p.m. The celebration concludes Sunday with a speaker at 9 a.m. and a worship service at 10:10 a.m.
Everything is open to the public; Johnson only asks that people RSVP for the dinner so they can anticipate how much food is needed.
“We're very much encouraging people to come and take part. Saturday, ...we're going to be doing a service project for the Mennonite Central Committee,” Johnson said.
That's a group that sends out school supplies and hygiene kits to people all over the world.
Among the alumni are one descendent of Joseph Stuckey who is still part of the congregation and another, retired physical John Stuckey, who is travelling from Maryland to Danvers to mark the occasion.
“We'll have different exhibits down here [in the Fellowship Hall] and also upstairs, and we're really highlighting the past, present and future.”
As for the future, Johnson said the congregation peaked at around 100 members. There are approximately 80 now. He said membership dropping off is related to farm families' children choosing different careers and moving away from their rural homesteads.
But Johnson and Zook said the members who've stayed are still very active.
“We've had a really good-sized adult choir, and we are known for the men's choir that was at our church and there were 10-12 something like that and just had a wonderful time praising God together,” Zook said.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the choir has been disbanded but Johnson said the church continues to sing hymns and host musically talented members. Traditional hymns, including some sung in German, will be part of the weekend's celebration.
There's also the way North Danvers Mennonite Church connects members of its small farming community.
“There're some people that really don't have much of a social life, truthfully, except coming to the church," Zook said. "Sunday morning, we have a fellowship hour after church, and this place is filled. People just stay and visit, and it's made them feel a part of something, and I think that's good,” Zook said.
The church has a one-classroom preschool and hosts Friday coffee as well, which draws in people from outside the church to be part of the community. Johnson said the Friday coffee's are some of the church's most vibrant gatherings.
“It gives them time to come and to spend some time together," he said.
Johnson said if there's anything he wants people to know about Mennonites, it's their commitment to service in a faith tradition that, in Danvers, began with a small group of farm families supporting each other.
“We live out our faith through helping others. Our mission statement is we're followers of Jesus, led by his word, reaching out in love. And I think that reaching out in love is a really important part of what we do.”
