Bell Tower

and Tolling at Our Church

To commemorate our 40th year at Prince of Peace, we installed a bell tower in fall of 2025.

The German hymn writer, Nikolai Grundtvig, mentions church bells in his great hymn in this way:

Built on a rock, the Church shall stand. Even when steeples are falling; Crumbled have spires in every land, bells still are chiming and calling. Calling the young and old to rest, calling the souls of those distressed, longing for life everlasting.  

Evangelical Lutheran Worship #652

Church bells have been ringing for centuries to remind us of those who have gone before us, but also to amplify and enliven celebrations, call the faithful to worship, and to announce the end of wars. There are as many uses for church bells as there are towers and steeples.

At Prince of Peace, we use our bell tower to ring out the good news of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.

  1. Five minutes before a worship service begins we ring a one minute peal. A peal of bells is when the bells, tuned to each other, are rung in a specific pattern to call your attention to the bells. At Prince of Peace, that specific peal of bells will mean that it is time to get to the sanctuary for worship.
  2. At the time of worship, one bell tolls three times. This tolling, called the Trinitarian Peal, will remind us that worship begins “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
  3. During the praying of the Lord’s Prayer, a bell will toll at the end of each of the seven petitions of the prayer. Simply pause when you see the bell icon ???? in the bulletin for the bell to toll. This allows the community within earshot our bell tower to know when we are praying the Lord’s Prayer.
  4. On All Saints’ Day, we toll a bell on the bell tower to remember those that have died since the last All Saints’ Day as their names are read during the prayers,
  5. At funerals we toll one bell for each year that the person has lived with us on this earth. Those tolls will begin at the end of the service as we move to our Columbarium or as we make our way to our cars to travel to an offsite cemetery.

Our bell tower might used for other celebrations like weddings, and ordinations, or even national celebrations. 

Our bell tower was dedicated on Palm Sunday 2026.

Helpful to chime in,

Pastor John Morris

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