The history of the Immanuel United Methodist Church can be traced to the 1850s when Methodist ministers from the German Chicago-Northwest Conference began mission work in the small communities between Chicago and Milwaukee. In Kenosha recent immigrants from Germany formed a congregation and incorporated as the Ebenezer German Methodist Church in 1854. A church building was erected in the following year.
From 1854 to 1860, the congregation was part of the Waukegan mission circuit. The Kenosha parish was left without a pastor in 1860, when the circuit disbanded, until 1863 when the Reverend Karl Becker assumed the pastorate.
Church membership increased dramatically in the first sixty years of the congregation, from 26 in 1856 to 230 in 1904 and 350 in 1924. During this period the name of the congregation was changed to the German Methodist Episcopal Church of Kenosha. A new church building was constructed in 1882 but was destroyed by fire in 1890.
During World War I, the name of the congregation was again changed, this time to Immanuel Methodist Episcopal Church. Prior to the pastorate of Reverend W. H. Schwiering (1917-1924), all services were conducted in German. During his term, some English language Sunday school and evening services commenced. In the succeeding years, a large number of recent German immigrants joined the congregation and as a result, separate English and German language Sunday services continued until the 1950s, when under the pastorate of Reverend Carl Hagen (1948-1952) German language services were discontinued.
In 1932 the German Methodist Conferences and the English Methodist Conferences merged. With the subsequent disbanding of the German Chicago-Northwest Methodist Conference, Immanuel Methodist Episcopal Church became a member of the Wisconsin Conference. Further organizational changes came in 1939, when the Methodist Episcopal Church South, the Methodist Episcopal Church North, and the Methodist Protestant Church merged to form the Methodist Church. The Immanuel congregation adopted certain structural changes, such as the consolidation of women's societies into the Women's Society of Christian Service, and the conversion of the Epworth League to the Methodist Youth Fellowship.
The Immanuel Methodist Church building was damaged by fire on January 4, 1960 and subsequently remodeled.
