STERLING — You won’t find Brad Wilson riding a horse throughout northwest Illinois preaching the gospel under the candlelight inside log cabins.

That’s how Methodist pastors like Wilson spread the gospel nearly 200 years ago. However, he’s more comfortable delivering his messages to his congregation from his pulpit in a church filled with history that reaches back to close to Sterling’s founding, and into the home of the man who helped put the city on the map.

First United Methodist Church, on the corner of Broadway and East Fifth Street, is the oldest church in town, and in Whiteside County, with origins dating back to 1838: That’s when the circuit-riding Rev. Barton H. Cartwright of Oregon waxed poetic inside Sterling founder Hezekiah Brink’s cabin, not far from where the present church building has stood since 1856.

“It’s the oldest church in Whiteside County, let alone Sterling,” Wilson said. “1838 was a long, long time ago. We have 13 years before the church’s bicentennial, and that’s something else. Here in the Midwest, that’s amazing.”

Though he’s been with First United for 10 years — a second-generation minister who came to the church 10 years ago after stops in Tampico and Fenton — he’s still discovering stories about the church, whether it’s about the contributions it’s made to the community, its impact on its congregations through the years, or the building’s history.

Some of those stories have come from the man who helps tend to the Lord’s house.

Ken Heerdt keeps giving Wilson something new to appreciate about the church through his experience as its janitor and stories that Ken’s wife Lois has told him about her family’s long association with it. The Heerdts were married at the church in December 1972 and he’s not only been part of its congregation ever since, but also stepped foot in places at the church that aren’t normally visited, like the bell tower and utility room.

That large black streak on the brick wall inside the bell tower? Just ask Heerdt: “That’s when lightning struck it,” he said.

“I love the history,” Heerdt said. “I love the antiquity of the church, and the different things we have here. You really feel the spirit when you come to church on Sunday morning.”

Like most churches throughout the nation in the past 60 years, attendance has declined: Today, only around 30 people take their familiar places in the pews during the church’s single Sunday morning service, far removed from the couple of hundred just a few generations ago when there were two morning services. The balcony seats are empty, save for services close to holidays when people visiting their family stop by, Wilson said.

But though there ranks are small their faith is mighty. Members volunteer in programs established by the church, such as the F.I.S.H. Food Pantry, founded in 1970, and the Loaves and Fishes breakfast program, which was started in 2011 and serves breakfasts four days a week at the church’s former classroom next door. Both programs get help from volunteers from other local churches.

“This church has a long, long glorious history of serving this community, way back to the beginning of this community,” Wilson said. “The hearts of the people in this church are in the right place. They really are. Their hearts are there for reaching out to those in need. If that doesn’t sound like a good thing to you, you probably won’t be happy here.”

The origin of local Methodist services date back to four years after Hezekiah Brink founded Harrisburg, at the east end of present-day Sterling. Harrisburg merged with Chatham, in Sterling’s west end, in 1839. Broadway was the midpoint between the two merged communities.

After being held in Brink’s home, services later moved to a nearby school house, and then to the Whiteside County Courthouse on Broadway (Sterling was the county seat from 1846-57) before a church was built in 1856 two blocks north of where the courthouse sat. The new church, then called Broadway Methodist Episcopal Church, opened to about 40 churchgoers, with the Rev. S.F. Denning as pastor — and it’s been there ever since, though services were interrupted for a short time.

The debt incurred from the building’s construction was eventually too much to handle by 1862, and the church was on the losing end of a lawsuit that led to its sale that year. But it didn’t take long for the community collection plate to come to the rescue. A year later, enough donations had been collected — with local rallies playing a part — to buy back the church.

With nearly 200 years of history, there were bound to be changes through the years, some of which people wouldn’t stand for — or sit down.

For a time, the church raised money by selling pew space to members who wanted a reserved spot, but a dispute regarding the sales led to the withdrawal of about 30 members not long after the building became a church once again. These days, there’s plenty of space for people to pull up a pew.

One of the biggest changes came as more people decided to call Sterling their home. The city nearly doubled in population from 1870 to 1910, growing by about 3,500 residents, and the original building could no longer suit the needs of the community. Instead of razing the church, it was substantially renovated and added onto between 1914 and 1915. One of the most notable changes during the process involved moving the front entrance, then facing Fifth Street, to Broadway.

“The church has a lot of character,” Heerdt said. “The differences and everything that they went through over the years is amazing, and it had to be genius to figure out putting the doors [toward Broadway].”

One of Heerdt’s fondest memories of playing a role in the church’s history happened this past September. The original church’s large, 350-pound stone marker bearing its name and opening date, was relocated and had been stored in the bell tower, which had been reconstructed after a 1902 fire. For years it sat unnoticed, even during the church’s aforementioned renovation, until the mid-1990s when Heerdt rediscovered it.

For 20 years he sought to find a safe way to have the stone restored and relocated to a more desirable place. With the help of a local moving company, the marker now sits underneath the church’s wood outdoor sign on the street corner.

“I would always look at that and go, ‘Why is that up here?’” Heerdt said. “They took it up and put it in the bell tower. It’s just something that shows that the church has been here for a while. Bringing that stone down was something I felt good about.”

As the church grew, so too did enrollment in Sunday school, which had taken place in the church, but outgrew its space by the 1960s. In 1966, a new two-story educational building opened next to the church at the corner of Ninth Avenue. By that time, the church had 850 members, with around 400 in Sunday school.

Trying to get more people to preach to has been a challenge for several years, but, ironically, a potential solution was found during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when public and church gatherings temporarily ceased. Wilson began to offer services through the Zoom online video application, reaching out to those who were shut in during the pandemic. He’s kept it going and has found it a good way to reach those who can’t make it to church for one reason or another: they may live in a nursing home, or they’re on vacation. The Heerdts took advantage of the online outreach during a recent trip to Europe.

“We managed,” Wilson said. “Our bishop closed all Methodist churches for almost three months, but in the middle of it we started doing church on Zoom, and we are still doing it for shut-ins for those who are in nursing homes that were with us almost every Sunday morning. It’s great because, before Covid, who would have thought about doing ‘Zoom church?’.”

As Sterling grew during its fledgling years, other churches were formed, some of them with roots reaching back to First United.

One of Sterling’s most prominent early residents, John Galt, was part of First United’s congregation in the early 1840s, but he grew dissatisfied with Methodist services in 1844 and established First Presbyterian Church in town later that year.

Another split at First Methodist occurred in 1867, when about 30 members who lived close to or west of downtown Sterling formed Fourth Street Methodist Church at West Fourth Street and Avenue A. There church remained there until 1975, when it moved to Sterling’s north side and became Wesley United Methodist. (The original Fourth Street building later became Full Gospel Assembly until it relocated in 1992 when the building was razed.)

Rock Falls’ United Methodist Church was founded months after Fourth Street Methodist in 1867; the Rev. J.H. Alling preached at both churches, making the Rock Falls church a second-degree part of the original Sterling church’s historical lineage, now in its 187th year.

Only 13 years remain until the church’s bicentennial benchmark, and Wilson and Heerdt would like to see the church reach that milestone, and as long as there’s a committed congregation, whether in the chapel or preparing food for those in need, that may happen.

“For a small congregation, they are very active,” Wilson said. “They’re very active. It’s incredible so many people we feed. Their outreach to the community is phenomenal. If you’re hungry, they’re going to feed you. That’s pretty remarkable in a town of this size.”

Services at First United Methodist Church, 501 Broadway in Sterling, are at 10 a.m. on Sunday. Call 815-625-0244 for more information.