wfn.org | Assembly Members Take Time to See Shrine Important to Their Lutheran

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Roots

August 18, 1997

ASSEMBLY MEMBERS TAKE TIME TO SEE SHRINE
IMPORTANT TO THEIR LUTHERAN ROOTS
97-CA-29-DM

     PHILADELPHIA (ELCA) -- "You can talk about history, but it's a lot
different to see it," John Gruber said as the tour bus made its way back to
Philadelphia Sunday afternoon.  A bit of history had, in fact, been seen
that day.
     Gruber, from Milwaukee, is a voting member of this year's Churchwide
Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting here
through Wednesday.  He was among just over 100 other voting members,
spouses and visitors who spent their one afternoon free of assembly
business to visit a church building -- a shrine, really -- steeped in
American Lutheran history.
     The visit was to Augustus Lutheran Church, more often called "Trappe
Church" after the borough in which it is located.  Built in 1743, the old
Trappe Church is not only the oldest  unaltered Lutheran church building in
North America, but is also the church most closely associated with the
patriarch of American Lutheranism, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg.
     A picture of the building itself is the focal point of the backdrop
behind the assembly podium at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.  Some may
think it's a picture of a barn, for that's what it resembles.  But it's not
a barn (even though a barn is where the congregation in Trappe, then called
Providence, first worshiped).  That's just the way 18th century German
architecture looks to us today.
     Young Pastor Muhlenberg traveled from Germany to Pennsylvania in 1743
to take charge of the Trappe congregation.  Just weeks after he preached
his first sermon there, the congregation began work on their first true
church building, which now stands a short distance behind and to the side
of a newer structure, built in 1852.  As time went on, Muhlenberg more than
any other single human being, was responsible for the growth of Lutheranism
in the eastern United States.
     "History is one of the weakest points of my being," Susan Stengel, an
assembly visitor from Voorhees, N.J., said to explain why she had taken the
trek to Trappe.  Originally from Texas, her family moved first to Boston,
then to the Philadelphia area, two cities of no little historical import.
"This is God's way of getting me interested," she said.
     The congregation does its best to get the visitor interested as well.
Members were on hand to help answer questions, and one was dressed in
colonial garb and reviewed the history of the old building.  He explained,
for example, that specific pews were auctioned off every year.  The
higher-price
d seats were near the front of the church   perhaps a surprise to
visiting Lutherans today, who often seem to prefer the back seats in
church.
     The congregation's assistant pastor, the Rev. William A. Fluck, added
even more to the experience by dressing in white wig and black gown, in
spite of this August afternoon's heat and humidity.  He was Muhlenberg this
day, reporting with relish that he had just returned from a visitation to a
neighboring colony and that "our churches in New York are flourishing."
     Then, clear as a bell in a building with hard, white walls and nearly
perfect acoustics, the visitors sang a hymn under the direction of Pastor
"Muhlenberg:" "Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done, in whom our heart rejoices, Who from our
mother's arms hath bless us on our way with countless gifts of love, and
still is ours today."
     On the bus ride back to the city, the Rev. Frederick Schumacher, a
voting member of the assembly, from White Plains, N.Y., reflected on the
experience and the hymn.  "Being in this church and singing 'Now Thank We
All Our God,'" he said, "gave me a sense of all the saints who have gone
before us."
     And that is history come alive.

For information contact:

Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html