One of Crawford County’s oldest churches is celebrating its 175th anniversary.
Robinson First United Methodist Church will celebrate with a tent revival and a catered picnic Sunday, Oct. 3.
The day will start with its usually 9 a.m. worship service, a contemporary service featuring a praise band. The tent meeting on the west lawn will start at 10:30 a.m.
The meeting will feature the music of the Red Letter Quartet and will include a display of old photographs and other memorabilia. It is open to the public, who should bring lawn chairs.
“It  should be a good time,” praise team member Yvonne Newlin said.
In a way, the tent meeting is a callback to the church’s earliest days, when a small band of Methodists gathered in each other’s homes and frequently hosted revivals that helped boost its numbers.
An early area history, William Henry Perrin’s 1883 History of Crawford and Clark Counties, Illinois, explained the church was Robinson’s oldest, but had little more to add on the subject.
“The Methodist Episcopal Church organization is the oldest church in Robinson, and dates back into the ‘forties,’” Perrin wrote. “Of its earliest history we obtained no reliable data and can give but a brief sketch of it.
“The elegant and tasteful brick church edifice was built in 1866, at a cost of more than $5,000. The membership is large and flourishing, and is under the pastorate of Rev. Mr. Massey. A good Sunday school, of which John Maxwell is superintendent, is maintained during the entire year.”
According to the Crawford County Illinois Historical Society, Methodists first attempted to evangelize this part of the country in the early 1820s, when circuit-riding preachers conducted services in settlers’ cabins.
Highsmith School was built in the early 1830s and became the regular site of religious services for both Methodists and Baptists in the county. Over the next few decades, various congregations established their own meeting houses.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of Robinson officially organized in 1846, with the first meetings taking place in private homes. As the group grew, services moved to local school houses or, on occasion, the Crawford County Courthouse.
Still, for some time the church had fewer than two dozen members, Mrs. Ernest E. Pulley wrote in a 1946 history. Building a church was discussed, but it was long believed the congregation was too small to bear the financial burden.
That began to change during  an 1849 revival that lasted three weeks, but was another revival that finally convinced the group they were ready for their own building.
Reverends L.C. English and C.W. Boomer conducted the revival in January 1866. “A great interest was awakened in the church” and several new members joined.
“At the close of this revival meeting, a movement was started for the building of the church,” spearheaded by Ethelbert Callahan — the grandson of a Methodist minister who fought in the Revolutionary War — and others, according to Pulley.
English would go on to become the church’s first pastor, filling the pulpit three separate times. Since then, it has had 42 pastors. The current one, Jay Regennitter, is in his eighth year with the church.
“As you might imagine, building projects always required congregations to step out in faith,” Regennitter wrote in March of this year. “From the 1866 original building to the 1899 structure, to the education wing, numerous parsonages and our current facility, people gave and supported the congregation in its efforts to provide a spiritual home for the community.”
The church ordered 100,000 bricks for $900 in February 1866. It was definitely a leap of faith; at the time, the congregation didn’t even own land on which to build.
Six months later, a lot was purchased in what was then the southwest part of town and a Mr. Fowler was hired to erect the structure. For his efforts, he was paid $517.57. The total cost of the project was $5,565.
“It was the first church of Robinson and the finest and best church in the county,” Pulley reported.
To pay for the structure, church members were charged “seat rentals.” Based on their ability to pay, these fees ranged from $5 to $20 per year.
In 1869, Callahan donated the remaining $565 due on the construction bill and the rents were discontinued.
In those early years, different churches, even those of different denominations continued to share facilities and even hold services together. In 1877, for example, the Methodists moved their Sunday school from morning to afternoon so members could also attend Sunday school at the Christian Church.
Also, for many years, the Methodists allowed local Presbyterians — who had donated to the building fund — to use their church for services on alternate Sundays.
Meanwhile, the growing Methodist congregation was already considering a bigger building. Land for the new church was purchased from J.M. Longnecker for $1,000 about 1895. The following year, the Ladies Aid Society began rasing money to pay for a new facility.
The society was one of a series of groups that allowed the church’s distaff members to do their part. It was the successor to the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society, which started in 1883.
“They were quite successful in their efforts,” Pulley wrote, “for by September 1897 they had paid $300 on the building lots.”
Ground was broken July 20, 1899. Lemay and Wilson of Casey constructed the building from plans drafted by J.W. Gaddis of Vincennes. Gaddis also designed the Crawford County Courthouse and the school that stood on the present site of the Robinson Public Library.
The cornerstone was laid Sept. 2, 1899, and a dedication service, attended by 600 to 700 people, was conducted April 8, 1900. With its tall belfry and large stained-glass windows, it soon become a Robinson landmark.
Meanwhile, the Ladies Aid Society continued to live up to its name. In 1901, it published The Methodist Cook Book and proceeds went toward paying some of the construction costs. Two years later, an unpaid bill resulted in the church’s electricity being shut off. The group quickly raised $41 and got the lights turned back on.
The 1899 church was remodeled between 1945 and 1952 and the sanctuary was again remodeled in the late 1960s.
By the late 1950s, the church had grown so much that the parsonage — just west of the church — was converted into an educational building known as Wesley House.
Plans were made to connect Wesley House to the church, but the congregation chose to tear down the house and build the present education building instead. The new facility was dedicated in 1960.
One the darkest events in the church’s history occurred on the holiest of nights.
The historic, 122-year-old structure was gutted by fire on Christmas night 2012. The 51-year-old education wing was spared from the flames but suffered heavy smoke and water damage.
Undaunted, the congregation vowed to rebuild.
“Whatever we do next will become the new landmark,” church board chairman Larry Quick told the Daily News at the time.
After several months of displacement, the education wing was remodeled and services held in the wing’s Asbury Hall. Ground for a new sanctuary was broken May 11, 2014.
Since then, the church has continued to serve the community and not just spiritually. For example, church members plan to hand out water bottles at the end of the Heath Harvest parade Saturday, Oct. 2. They’re also preparing for the church’s fourth annual Trunk or Treat at Halloween.
And, as Regennitter recently explained, First UMC is continuing its mission of “vibrant worship, education for all ages and reaching out into the community as we share in finding the heartbeat of God.”