St. John's Lutheran Church, Cedar Mills, MN/125th Anniversary
From CowTales
< St. John's Lutheran Church, Cedar Mills, MN
St. John's Lutheran Church, Cedar Mills, MN celebrated its 125th Anniversary on September 10th, 2017. It was held at the church. Lyla Baur, Paul Scharrer and Kathryn Scharrer, James Baur and Terri Baur represented our family. The organizers even reserved seats for us in the church!
I thought the service was awesome. St. John's still uses The Lutheran Hymnal in their regular services. It was neat to be using a familiar liturgy (page 32). The pastor had a good sermon filled with law and Gospel. The question he posed to the congregation concerning the church's history was "What is the most important day in St. John's history?"
Many answers ran through my head. Was it when the charter members met. Was it the first services held in the local district school house? Was it the baptisms, confirmations and marriages which took place in the days of yesteryear? The estabishment of the school? The building of the church? The list went on.
The pastor's answer was "Today is the most important day." That answer took me by surprise, but than I had to totally agree. Today was a colmanation of all those previous things. If we weren't gathering today, those other achievements would have failed to pass down the Great Heritage to the present generation. Wow, what a thought!
What heritage got passed down? Here I was gathered with a body of fellow believers. We were sharing God's Great Heritage. What a blessing. The families of 5 charter member are still in the congregation. St. John's and what it preaches are thier heritage.
I discovered something new. St. John's is part of my heritage. Cedar Mills was always just an abrstract place on the map. I found I had real roots to that congregation.
The church was full.
Thoughts from Kathryn Scharrer
These are the thought of Mom and Paul
- Awesome services and music friendly people warmly welcomed
- Lots of participation of the members and nicely planned
Things we learned
- Grandma started the Ladies Aid and taught a year at the school.
- Grandma taught a year at the school.
- There was an older pastor there whose uncle was a member when Gr. Baur was pastor. He told Paul that his uncle regarded Pastor Baur as his favorite pastor and that his uncle was very particular so that was a compliment!!
- Grandpa B was the first pastor to be ordained at the church.
Kathryn Scharrer thoughts were these too but I felt like I had a huge family hole filled.
- As we were in church I was emotionally moved as *I thought of Grandpa sick and Grandma struggling to help him in his illness and keep their son sheltered form how awful it was.
- I thought of how it was for Dad to be at his Dad's funeral and then continue with out him.
- I have also thought how Grandma never talked about it. Was this due to the extreme sorrow or thought no one was interested. Dad also never talked about it.
- Grandpa Baur finally became a very real person.