BRADYS BEND, Armstrong County — The 100-member congregation of Trinity Reformed Church, 887 Route 68, will celebrate the church’s 150th anniversary Sunday.

The event will begin with a dinner for the congregation at 5 p.m. with a worship service to follow at 7 p.m.

Former pastors have been invited to return, and special music will be provided by the Sugar Creek Ensemble, the church choir, singers Madison Eyth and Hailey Patsy and the children’s choir.

Old-time hymns, praise and worship songs will be featured. Afterward, there will be a time of fellowship in the church hall.

Doris Bearfield of East Brady, a longtime church member and member of the anniversary committee, said the committee has been planning the anniversary celebration for more than five months.

“We’re still planning. We have two more meetings before Oct. 30,” said Bearfield.

Trinity Reformed’s pastor, the Rev. Pete Sapp of Kaylor, is the son of a former pastor, the late Rev. Frank Sapp Sr., who served at Trinity Reformed from 1992 to 1999, before moving to Piqua, Ohio.

Sapp said, “I stayed in the area. I served as youth pastor for East Brady Baptist Church before.”

“This was my first church as pastor. I’ve got some big shoes to fill, but at the same time it was an honor,” said Sapp, a Karns City High School graduate who earned his bachelor’s degree from Clarion University before attending Liberty Seminary in Lynchburg, Va.

Sapp said Trinity Reformed began when Germans who came to this country to be ironworkers began to meet to form a church.

“They met together in people’s houses,” starting in 1864, said Sapp, “We want to celebrate the people and not the building.”

According to the history compiled by church member Dottie Jo Vogt, there were 37 members who founded Trinity German Reformed Church.

On June 10, 1867, the Bradys Bend Iron Company gave the Trinity congregation a parcel of land to erect a house of worship. In 1868, a one-story building was completed. All the worship services were spoken or read in German. The following year the church bought its first organ.

Since its founding, Trinity has gone through a succession of names: 1868, Trinity German Reformed; 1943, Trinity Evangelical Reformed; 1957, Trinity United Church of Christ; and 2007, Trinity Reformed. Twenty- four pastors have ministered during the church’s long history.

Sapp said the church is “part of the Evangelical Association but independent of any governing body.”

“We were part of the United Church of Christ until 2007, when we disagreed with the direction the church was going.”

The different names and denominations haven’t shaken longtime member Don King, 88, of Bradys Bend, a former church elder and member of the anniversary committee.

“I joined in 1953. I came in through my wife. My wife’s parents were part of the church,” King said.

Sapp said while there aren’t any direct descendants of the original founders, the congregation has renewed itself.

“New people move into the area, looking for something different and they immediately feel accepted by this place,” said Sapp.

“This is a genuine place. We don’t make you jump through hoops to make you feel part of the church. We really do try to be nonjudgmental. Nobody perfect walks through those doors,” said Sapp.

The original building has undergone many changes through the years, just as the church has had names.

The picket fence that kept out the community livestock, the wallpapered walls, the high-perched pulpit, the deacon’s corner, the high, straight-backed pews, the two chimneys and the potbellied stoves are gone. The multicolored 32-pane windows alone remain.

According to Vogt’s history, over the years many improvements have been made to the church including a restroom to replace an outhouse; and the removal of the steeple and bell with the bell being placed on a pad beside the church.

Air conditioning was installed, as was a chairlift in the basement’s outside stairwell. The house next to the church was bought for use as a parsonage and currently is used for extra Sunday school space as well as Sapp’s office.

Sapp said the congregation hopes to start work on a pavilion in the near future.

“We like to get together and do family things once a month, and this would be another place to gather,” said Sapp.