125th Anniversary: Trinity United Methodist Church to celebrate milestone Sunday

The Trinity United Methodist Church (TUMC) is celebrating the church’s 125th anniversary on Sunday, Nov. 3. The celebration event includes a regular church service at 10:30 a.m. followed by a catered luncheon and special anniversary program in the church’s social room.

Ritzville’s Trinity United Methodist Church traces its beginnings to November 1888 when nine pioneers in the area came forward to become charter members of the new Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church. This was the first Methodist church in Adams County and the second church to be formed within Ritzville.

In the spring of 1889, the small two-room church was built at the northwest corner of Second and Division. Tough economic times forced the church to close in 1891, before improved wheat crops helped the church reopen with a renewed vigor the following year.

To minister to the growing influx of German-Russian immigrants, the Immanuel German M.E. Church was organized and built six miles south of Ritzville, with a cemetery next to the church. Four years later in 1893, a second German-speaking M.E. Church was formed and built a small church five miles northwest of Ritzville, the Zion German M.E. Church. The ministers for these two rural churches lived in town and rode by horseback or by horse and buggy to each church to conduct Sunday services. In 1906, these two rural German M.E. churches merged and built a church and parsonage in town, the German M.E. Church located at the corner of Fourth and Washington.

For 28 years, Ritzville had two Methodist Episcopal churches, one English speaking and one predominately German speaking, but in 1934 the German M.E. church dissolved and their members transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church. During the 1930s and into the 1940s, many families sent their children to Sunday school at the Methodist Episcopal Church as it was the only predominately English-speaking church in town.

In 1939, the word “Episcopal” was dropped from the name for the Methodist Church at the national level, and the local church became the Ritzville Methodist Church.

The Women’s Society of Christian Service (WSCS), for all women of the Methodist Church, started the drive to do something to the old church building in 1946. The church had been remodeled in 1902 and an extensive renovation done in 1912, but the congregation had outgrown the church.

In 1948 construction of the new church building at the present location on Second Avenue was started. The church was almost halfway completed when a disastrous fire the night of Nov. 28, 1948, completely destroyed the church and only the concrete walls were left standing. The first services were held in the new church on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1950, using folding chairs as the new pews had not arrived.

The present parsonage, located next to the church on Washington, was originally the country schoolhouse at Marengo. The school was purchased by the congregation from the Ritzville School District in 1947, moved to town, placed over a basement and remodeled into a home.

The 1950s served as a time of phenomenal growth for churches throughout the United States and at the Ritzville Methodist Church. With the increased membership, a “name the church” contest held in 1968 added Trinity to the church’s name.

The sanctuary underwent a remodel in 1982, with other renovations being made to the church in 1995. In 2005, the Carter family redid and refurbished the ministerial in the memory of their parents and is now called the Dr. and Mrs. Aldred and Elfreda Carter Memorial Study.

Trinity UMC has remained a vital part of Ritzville through the years. Over the past decade outreach of the church into the community includes the Stayin’ Alive Youth Group (done in conjunction with the Four-Square Church), Celebrate Recovery, Little Learner’s Preschool, and the still to-be-opened Soul Café. TUMC is also involved with mission outreach domestically and internationally. A former pastor, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Hu, is serving with the Methodist Church out of Sibu, Borneo. Over the past four years, TUMC has been involved with an evangelism effort and gone to four area UM churches to “teach them how to tell their faith story in Christ.”

Thirty-nine ministers have served at the Methodist Church from 1888 until 2013.

For more information or if interested in attending the event, call TUMC office at 659-1783.

(Information submitted by Sally Powers, the church historian)