Circuit-riding Methodist ministers held religious services in Pokagon Township during the 1830s and 1840s, and a class was organized in Sumnerville in 1840. In 1876 the Methodists purchased a building that had been built in 1862 as a hops barn and renovated it as a church, adding a belfry and installing pews and stained glass windows in pointed frames. In January 1913 the Reverend Leroy O. Bostwick, assisted by the Reverend George Bennard of Albion, held a series of religious revivals there. Bennard, who had begun composing "The Old Rugged Cross" in Albion the previous year, completed the hymn there in preparation for the revival services, and during the revival the church choir sang it publicly in its entirety for the first time. Impressed by the hymn, the Reverend and Mrs. Bostwick financed its first printing, and it quickly became one of the popular hymns in the United States. The following year the Methodists purchased the nearby Baptist Church and sold this building to John Phillips, who used it as a storage barn. In 1998 the Pokagon United Methodist Church reacquired the church for restoration.