Read time: 3 min.

Quiet countryside corners are full of history if you know where to look. Just north of Jones Cemetery in rural Delaware County, the sorry remains of the old Pleasant Run Church sit amidst the weeds and bramble. They beg for a second glance.

Pleasant Run Church stood at the northeast corner of Jackson Street Pike and County Road 850-West, a short distance south of the Pleasant Run Creek that gave the chapel its name. Land for the church was donated in 1881 by James and Nancy Reed¹.

From the beginning, Pleasant Run was a shared space. Three denominations -Methodists, Christian Newlights, and German Baptist Brethren- rotated services through the building². Each claimed one Sunday a month, while the remaining week was reserved for Sunday school. 

The little church was a rare example of cooperation in Indiana’s rural religious landscape. Eventually, though, German Baptists who lived far away from the church established their own congregation and formed Antioch Church in 1904³. Their building still stands at the corner of Bethel Pike and County Road 500-West. I’ll write about it.

At first, Pleasant Run Church was part of the North Indiana Conference, but it eventually became a member of the Miami Christian Conference. Miami Christian remained its steward for twenty years before the property was transferred to the Jones Cemetery Association in 1966. The cemetery sold the church to a private party in 1975⁴. 

The old church was eventually purchased by a Muncie attorney who had plans to restore it⁵. Evidently, though, that didn’t happen: the building stood idle for several years before it burned in the early 1990s⁶. No one seems sure how it caught fire, but all that remains is its front step and concrete basement. 

Pleasant Run Church is gone, but its story still lingers. Even if barely anything marks where it once stood, those fragments still anchor the memory of a place where neighbors gathered, denominations overlapped, and faith was practiced collectively. It’s hard to see for most of the year, but the building’s remains are worth a step down into the brush and overgrowth. 

Sources Cited
1 Harris, B. (1987, May 23). Book traces history of Jones Cemetery. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 3. 
2 (See footnote 1). 
3 Harris, B. (1995, July 23). A celebration of faith. The Muncie Star. p. 13. 
4 (See footnote 1). 
5 Greene, D. (June 14, 1979). Seen and Heard in Our Neighborhood. The Muncie Star. p. 8.
6 Celebrate (1995, July 23). The Muncie Star. p. 15.