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1851 – present
The first church in Liberty Township was Methodist, erected in the town in 1851 and replaced in 1878; its congregation meets today as North Liberty United Methodist Church. Chapman: "The first church in Liberty tp., was erected by the Mehodists in North Liberty, in 1851, during the pastorate of Rev. A. Badley. This was used till 1878, when, during the administration of Rev. R. H. Sanders, a new and commodious structure was erected." Howard agrees on both buildings — "The Methodist Society built the first church in the township. It was built in the town of North Liberty in 1851. A finer one was erected in its place in 1878" — but the two first-hand carriers spell the pastors' names differently, and both spellings print: Chapman has Rev. A. Badley and Rev. R. H. Sanders; Howard has the Reverends A. Bradley and R. H. Saunders. Chapman names the congregation's principal founders in 1851: John Rupel (dead by 1880), Jas. Cole, John Quigley, Henry Reamer, Samuel Williams, Sumner G. Williams, and D. W. Reece; and its class-leaders: Henry Reamer, Isaac R. Cole, and Thos. Faulkner. Both carriers name the ministers the church sent out — Samuel T. Cooper, H. B. Ball, Nelson Green, James Green, Samuel Godfrey, S. Lamb, and C. W. Miller of the North Indiana Conference, and John C. Baker of the Illinois Conference — with one more spelling conflict between them: Chapman's "J. C. Metsker" is Howard's "J. C. Metzger." In 1880 the North Liberty circuit was served by the Rev. Orlando R. Beebe, whose Chapman biography traces him from licensure by the Hebron Quarterly Conference on 11 May 1872 through appointments at Winamac, Argus, Wheeler, and Union Mills to this county; Polk's gazetteer independently lists "Beebe O R Rev (Methodist)" at North Liberty, and the two carriers agree. No read carrier narrates the congregation's twentieth-century course — its buildings, its pastoral succession, or the 1968 merger that made it United Methodist. It stands on the town's present roll: the Town of North Liberty's "Places of Worship" list gives "North Liberty United Methodist Church — 105 South Main Street, North Liberty, IN — 574-656-3132," while the denomination's Find-A-Church listing gives "103 S Main St" at the same phone number; the street-number conflict prints whole and is not resolved here. Through the disaffiliation wave of 2023–24, in which the Indiana Conference approved hundreds of departures, no source opened or searched names North Liberty among the disaffiliated, the congregation continues to be carried as United Methodist by the town list and by the denomination's own finder at "Active" status, and it does not appear in the denominational news list of Indiana churches closed in the year before the 2024 annual conference — where Walkerton's United Methodist church, in the same district, does appear. At the strength of those carriers the congregation remained United Methodist through the wave; the conference's official ratification lists, checked name by name, are the settler for the negative at record strength. The congregation's pastor as of November 2026 was not found in any record reached — no Indiana Conference appointment record naming North Liberty was reached — and the seat banks as a named gap (G-RL-1), its settler the conference's 2025 or 2026 appointment book or its online church-and-clergy directory. Pastor names attached to the church in obituary notices — Judith Adams in 2011, Jan Dimick in 2010, Fred Stayton in 1998 — are historical only and are not printed as current.