Trinity Lutheran Church celebrates 150 years of commitment to Lawrence

Trinity Lutheran Church will have a special service for its 150th anniversary Sunday. Among the congregation's milestones was the building for ,000 in 1870 its church and parsonage shown here on the northeast of the corner of 11th and New Hampshire streets. In a milestone of Trinity's 150 yeas in Lawrence, the congregation moved in 1928 to its current location two blocks to the south.

It’s fitting that the first church the members of Trinity Lutheran Church built in Lawrence was made of native limestone.

The congregation that has been a bedrock of the community will mark its 150th year with a special sesquicentennial service starting at 10:45 a.m. Sunday at the church, 1245 New Hampshire St.

Trinity Lutheran 150th anniversay service

The Rev. Susan Candea, director for Evangelical Mission and Bishop’s Associate in the Central States Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will deliver an anniversary message during the 11 a.m. service Sunday.

The service will be preceded at 10:45 by an extended musical prelude, featuring the Trinity Choir, Matins Choir, Cymbala hand bell choir, Children’s Choir and brass quartet. A congregational meal will follow the service in the Fellowship Hall.

The Rev. Brian Elster said he has learned how deeply the church’s roots are entwined with the community since becoming pastor of the church in 2015. It was a different experience from those he had in his earlier positions at much younger churches on the West Coast.

“I have a church member whose great grandfather was farming here during Quantrill’s raid,” he said. “He joined the posse to chase him down and was grateful they didn’t catch him.”

Trinity Lutheran doesn’t quite reach back to the time of Quantrill’s raid, which was in 1863, but it was founded soon after the Civil War when the return of stability heralded the arrival of many new German immigrants who brought their Lutheran faith with them to their new home, said church member Kevin Boatright. Trinity Lutheran was founded in 1867 as the first mission congregation in Kansas of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with the goal of being the faith home of those new immigrants, he said.

The Rev. Brian Elster of Trinity Lutheran Church is preparing with his congregation for a special service Sunday to observe the church's 150th anniversary. Elster is holding a church memoir congregation member Vicki Julian prepared for the occasion.

It was founded with 27 members under the stewardship of the Rev. Morris Officer. Boatright said he assumed the entire congregation were members of the three founding families of Rockland, Lyter and Shell mentioned in the church’s accounting of the founding.

The church met in homes of members and in some unidentified location on Massachusetts Street, Boatright said. The congregation was different by design from most early frontier Lutheran churches as signaled by it original name of First English Lutheran Church, he said.

“Historically, many Lutherans from Germany and Scandinavia went to churches where only their native languages were spoken,” he said. “Trinity was different. The decision was made to have services in English, which helped the largely working-class immigrant congregation become part of the community.”

The strategy apparently worked as the congregation had enough money to raise its first church in 1870, Boatright said. That building and its parsonage still stand on the northeast corner of 11th and New Hampshire streets and are now home to professional offices.

“Its architect was the same one who designed the State Capitol building in Topeka,” Boatright said. “That church cost $5,000 to build.”

About 60 years after its founding, Trinity outgrew its first church.The congregation moved to the current church two blocks to the south in 1928 after a two-year construction project, Boatright said.

“After World War I, it was clear the church needed a bigger building,” he said. “With the first service in the new church, there was an elaborate procession from the old church to the new building.”

Throughout the church’s history and moves, the congregation has stayed true to the spirit of its early commitment to improve the lives of immigrants, Boatright and Elster said. The congregation’s involvement continues through such activities as its membership in the Lawrence interfaith social advocacy group Justice Matters and its hosting of homeless families for a week at the church through the Family Promise Program.

“One of the things we contribute to Lawrence is a deep-seated commitment to social justice and commitment to our community,” Elster said. “People — both conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats — are engaged faithfully in daily life. I think that is something important to us.”

Congregation member Vicki Julian recounts bricks and mortar milestones like the 1992 church expansion with those of social commitment.

“The church had the distinction of having the first licensed adolescent child care in Kansas in the summer of 1994,” she said. “It was basically seventh- and eighth-graders. It was a teen enrichment center. We had the sheriff’s office, the Lawrence Police Department, Bert Nash and many other organizations come in that summer.”

Julian, who became a Trinity member after she married her husband, Steve, in the church, remembers congregational cultural milestones, as well.

“We used to have a day each year when women took over the service,” she said. “I think I was the first female usher when I was asked to usher on Ash Wednesday. I was happy to do it. It was the 1970s in the height of the feminist movement. We had our first woman pastor, Rachel Hanson, in 1980.”

A writer and editor, Julian has published a church memoir for the anniversary with the help of her business partner Maureen Carroll. The memoir tells much of the church’s history through the words of those who lived it.

“It was wonderful to read what brought people to Trinity and what keeps them there,” she said. “Many spoke about other members and the church’s community involvement.”

As with Julian, church member Susan Hadl’s Trinity memories are a mix of structural church improvements, such as the hotly debated move of the church organ in the 1970s from the chancel area to the balcony, and the congregation’s community outreach effort. A community project that has occupied her is the pet pantry. Open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays at the church, the pantry provides cat and dog food for the homeless and others threatened with the loss of a pet because of the expense of food.

“We help people in dire straits who would have to surrender their pets at a time they need that companionship,” Hadl said.”When we started it three years ago, we’d sit around staring at the wall with maybe six people coming in. Now, we have 80 people a week and provide food for over 300 pets.”

Boatright and Elster said the church’s actual founding day was March 17, 1867. That fact gave the congregation another way to share its anniversary celebration with the community, Boatright said.

“We’ll be in the downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade,” he said. “It seems fitting to be part of the celebration even though we aren’t Irish.”