The interior of Immanuel Lutheran Church is seen here, courtsey of the church Facebook page. The congregation will be celebrating 150 years this weekend.

DUNNELL — Immanuel Lutheran Church in Dunnell will be celebrating a milestone event this weekend, marking 150 years of existence in the rural community. The area saw an influx of predominately Swedish immigrants, and in 1871 the church began as Blooming Prairie Lutheran Church and included 12 families. After major growth in the congregation, years after the establishment of the church, a new foundation was built in 1904, creating the current structure for the church celebrated today.

Dale Knuth shares what will be happening this weekend to celebrate the occasion.

“On Saturday, we’re having Mr. Glenn Henriksen at 2 p.m., and he’s going to have a concert,” he said. We normally have a concert on the last Sunday before Christmas every year. Last year we didn’t do that, so we’re going to have him now.”

Knuth stated that the concert will be a lone event on Saturday, with more festivities to kick off at 9 a.m. Sunday morning with a breakfast, followed by a church service at 10:45 a.m. and a meal at 12 p.m.

“We’ll have various pastors that have been through our church, but we don’t know exactly how many there will be. Some of the pastors will be helping out with communion.

“Then there’s a sit-down meal at 12, and at 2 p.m. we’ll have another program. That’ll be for remembrance of the church and whoever wants to speak will speak about their memories of the church and what the church has meant to them. After the 2 p.m. service, then there’ll be some more fellowship with some cake.

“There’ll be a lot of talking to do,” he continued. “This is just something special. It’ll be a long time before another 150 years.

“The church is still growing and thriving. We have our current Pastor, Fred Dykhuizen, who just started working for us this last spring. We’ve got a lot of programs for kids, and it’s just nice to see that we can keep on going when a lot of churches are closing these days.

“As far as the history goes, we have pictures of past people and the original church. That was built on the site where Lake Fremont Cemetery is, north of town.

“That was a wooden structure and they had all sorts of problems with drought and grasshoppers. Then in 1904, they built the current church and it’s been there ever since.

“One of the reasons we’re having the concert is as a fundraiser to help restore the bell tower. The bell is from the first church. So hopefully we can get that bell tower restored, but the bell works fine.”