2019 is a big year for Bethlehem United Methodist Church of Fishers. The church is celebrating its 175th birthday. Bethlehem, founded by pioneers in 1844, is the oldest continuous community of faith in Hamilton County.
Bethlehem U.M.C is located at 136th Street and Olio Road in Fall Creek Township. The church began in November 1844 in Josiah and Elizabeth Crook’s log barn at their homestead near 136th Street and Prairie Baptist Road.
In about 1845, a log church building was erected on Olio Road, southeast of the present site. In 1851, a frame church was constructed at the present location. During a reconstruction project from 1912 to 1914, the original building was moved a few feet and rotated onto a finished basement. New additions to the front and rear were also made at that time.
While an interstate, Saxony, a large Hamilton County Schools Campus, Avalon, and Hamilton Town Center have grown around the church, Bethlehem’s building and its historic cemetery have stood firm in good hands through the years.
Many upgrades have been made since the 1851 building went up, most recently of the lower level kitchen and meeting rooms, the addition of an electric chair lift between the floors in 2013, the addition of new stained glass front windows, restoration of the original 1851 pews (made of oak donated from a member’s farm) and redecoration of the Sanctuary in 2015. This spring, solar panels were added.
Begun as a “class” of the United Brethren Church, with 18 charter members in 1844, the church became part of the Evangelical United Brethren denomination in a 1946 merger. A second merger, in 1968, of the EUB with the Methodist Church produced the current denomination, The United Methodist Church.