{"id":31384,"date":"2025-12-12T12:39:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T17:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/?p=31384"},"modified":"2025-12-12T12:39:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T17:39:57","slug":"church-built-in-1860-on-weekend-tours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/12\/church-built-in-1860-on-weekend-tours\/","title":{"rendered":"Church built in 1860 on weekend tours"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By BOB SHRALUKA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>WZBD.com<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A church built in 1860 is one of the stops on the Christmas Home Tours scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The church is still used for Christmas Eve services and small weddings, according to officials of the Adams County Historical Society and Berne Chamber of Commerce, which are sponsoring the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are eight sites on the tour which may be visited between the hours of 1 and 6 p.m. each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tickets are $20 per person and are available in advance at the Next Page Bookstore in Decatur and the Berne Chamber office. Tickets will also be available at the sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a ticket, a person may visit each of the locations and may do some Saturday and some others Sunday, if preferable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tour organizers say that in 1839, David Baumgartner and his wife came to Berne to join other members of his family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rev. David went about rallying other families to establish the first Mennonite fellowship in Indiana. Services were held in homes, later in a school and, in 1860, a church (photo) was built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"457\" height=\"364\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swiss-Heritage-Church.jpg?resize=457%2C364&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31385\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swiss-Heritage-Church.jpg?w=457&amp;ssl=1 457w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swiss-Heritage-Church.jpg?resize=300%2C239&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 457px) 100vw, 457px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The church has no bell or steeple to identify it as a church. This is reminiscent of the Mennonite churches in Switzerland which were built the same way so as to avoid recognition and persecution, according to tour organizers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Men sat on one side of the sanctuary and women sat on the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1887, the Berne church and Baumgartner church merged and became the First Mennonite Church, now located at the intersection highways 27 and 218 in Berne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By BOB SHRALUKA WZBD.com A church built in 1860 is one of the stops on the Christmas Home<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,15],"class_list":["post-31384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","tag-events","tag-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wzbd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Swiss-Heritage-Church.jpg?fit=457%2C364&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31386,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31384\/revisions\/31386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wzbd.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}