When An Amish Church Divides

Amish people dressed in Sunday clothes walking down a country road with buggy in background — Photo: Jim Halverson

How do the Amish create new churches? Jim Halverson sends along a snippet from Amish publication Die Blatt giving an Amish church “District Division” report from Indiana.

Note: this would be “divide” in the neutral/positive sense (not a split where different factions of Amish go their different ways).

We’ll take a look at that report below. First a bit about the Amish church district.

A growing Amish church has to (eventually) divide

Amish church districts are geographically-based. They are typically 25 to 35 families in size, though may be as small as a handful of families in fledgling communities. They hold church services together every two weeks, along with other events.

A church district consists of families in a relatively small area, which ideally has all the homes within buggying, or even better, walking distance of one another.

In larger settlements, they might be quite close together (even within a square mile or less). In younger communities – or on the edges of larger settlements – they tend to cover a wider geographical area.

In such cases, you might have a group of families living relatively close to one another, and one or two families living miles away from them.

These districts grow naturally as families get larger, new families are formed, and people move into an area.

So Amish churches need to divide regularly as long as they are growing (see this post for the difference between Amish church districts, communities, and affiliations).

A row of horses tied up eating hay — Horses eat and wait for their owners as church is held at a northern Indiana Amish home. Photo: Jim Halverson

The great majority of Amish do not build church meetinghouses, holding services on a rotating basis throughout the year in members’ home spaces (like basements or large rooms), workshops, or even barns.

A church wagon is used to carry church benches between homes in a district, which are used both for seating at the service and for the church meal. Each district has its own wagon and benches.

At some point churches become too large for Amish households to comfortably host services. They usually max out at around 120-150 people before a division needs doing.

Dividing a church in practice

Amish churches usually divide on simple geographical lines, such as a road, river or other geographical feature. When a division happens, you will find your church group suddenly grow smaller on Sunday, as it is effectively halved.

This may also mean that you are no longer attending church with family members regularly – who may happen to live on the other side of the road which has become the new dividing line between the old and newly-formed districts.

Masthead of Die Blatt Amish newspaper — Die Blatt is an Indiana-based Amish church publication

You will have to in a certain sense “say goodbye” to a group of families which you may have seen twice monthly at church for many years. This doesn’t mean you can’t visit the old district’s services…but the regularity of seeing certain families and friends every other Sunday at church will end.

The only way to effectively change districts is to move addresses. Amish people do this for reasons including issues within a given church, or a desire to live in a more progressive or conservative district.

This will happen, for example, in larger communities where there is a range of districts. Being in a “desirable” or “undesirable” church district can even have an influence on house prices in some cases. However, moving is not exactly convenient, so you do your best where you are.

Forming a new district

The men’s names seen in the image below (“Marlin Fry’s district has divided”) refer to each district’s Bishop. Districts will often also have geographical names based on a nearby town or other feature of the map.

You can see the new district (called “annex”) gets a new number, which is a variation of the original district’s number.

In northern Indiana, they use this simple numbering system, but in communities like Lancaster County, they will generally have geographical names (eg, “Southeast Pequea”; “Ronks”, etc).

You can see the new dividing line is a road or roads, and families land in the new district or remain in the old based on whether they are east or west, or north or south, of a given road.

In the second instance above it is slightly different, with homes divided based on house numbering along a county road which serves as the focal point of the division.

A new church district will need to ordain a new set of ministers. A bishop in such cases will take care of both districts until a new leader is ordained. The new church will also need a set of church benches and utensils for the church meal.

Open wagon with wooden benches and chairs — An Amish church wagon showing benches used both for church service and the church meal. Photo: Jim Halverson

In the northern Indiana community, there were a total of 114 Amish church districts back in 2002. By 2024, that figure had doubled to 231, each new church district going through a process like that described above.