Old time religion: Alice Church of God celebrates 150 years of worship

It’s no small miracle that members of the Alice Church of God, a quaint structure situated on a gravel road smack dab in the middle of southwestern Grundy County, celebrated the 150th anniversary of the church’s founding on Sunday afternoon. As recently as six or seven years ago, it teetered on the brink of extinction with just five regular attendees and a need for crucial repairs that would cost nearly $200,000.
           
But faith has always carried this congregation forward, even against seemingly insurmountable odds.
           
“It was a God thing,” longtime member Sharla Brindle said. “I’m not going to tell you it was easy.”
           
Today, between 25 and 30 worshippers fill the pews each week, and that number ballooned to 160 on Sunday as past members, former pastors and relatives came from across the country—states like California, Missouri, Minnesota, Indiana and Maryland—to commemorate the little church that could.
           
Alice, located on 270th Street approximately six miles north of Conrad and nine miles southwest of Grundy Center, was once a community in its own right—complete with the church that still stands, a cemetery, a post office and a blacksmith shop. The North Carolinians who settled it sought a fresh start in the aftermath of the Civil War, and under pastor J.M. Klein, the first church services were held in 1868.
           
In 2018, Alice is one of only three Churches of God of its denomination (not to be confused with the larger Pentecostal denomination based in Tennessee) in the entire state of Iowa. Preachers have come and go, but Jim Hartman—who also serves the Whitten Community Church and lives in Union—has found a groove over the last four years and led the congregation back to a place it can feel good about, building on the progress of predecessors Gerald Casselman and Jim Snare.
           
“When this church first existed, General Custer was fighting the Battle of Little Big Horn,” Hartman said. “Major things have happened in history, and this little church meets every Sunday. World War I, the Roaring ‘20s went on, and this church met every Sunday. People are getting shot with machine guns in Chicago (a reference to prohibition and Al Capone), and this church is meeting every Sunday. Seabiscuit is winning all the horse races, Hitler is the big thing and then we have World War II… and a lot of what that church went through was just supporting each other through that war.”
           
H.L. Heim, who led the church from 1959 to 1977, was the longest serving pastor in the 20th century, and families like the Brindles, Stovers, Heims and Ralstons have come to define Alice. Still, the doors are always open, and members like Karen Berryman—who, along with her husband Gordon, has been driving from Dumont every Sunday for the last two years—have found an unlikely home here. 
 
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