Methodist worship in the Rowena area began in 1874 with a Sunday school in the dugout home of Madison and Elizabeth Webster and early preaching in the sod shanty of Samuel and Mrs. Samuel McMackin, where circuit-riding ministers and worshipers met in homes and other simple spaces during the following years. After Rowena was founded in 1888 following the opening of nearby quartzite quarries, Methodist services moved to the town hall, where a reed organ carried from a nearby home accompanied hymn singing, and conversions led to baptisms in the Big Sioux River and the Rowena Quarry. In 1901 plans were made to build a church, construction began in 1902, and before the building was finished its first event was the funeral of Jennie Wright. The Methodist Episcopal Church of Rowena was dedicated on February 8, 1903, after the full $1900 cost had been pledged, and in 1905 a bell purchased through ice cream social fundraising was presented at a Christmas service. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan made unsuccessful attempts to infiltrate the church and once used its bell to sound the community fire signal to draw attention to a burning cross on a nearby hillside. Declining membership led to combined services with the Ben Clare United Methodist Church in the 1960s, and the Rowena Methodist Church closed in 2002 after more than a century of worship and community life.