The above picture was taken on my wedding day. While my mother was fussing about getting
everyone to the reception, my father had gone from the receiving line back to
the church office and was finishing the paperwork that would make my wedding
official with the state of North Dakota and then taking the time to enter the occasion
into the church records. He liked to
take care of those things right away.
Sometimes it made my mother a bit impatient. There were times when after a baptism, the
family would be invited to a dinner at the baptized family’s home and we would
all be waiting, because after everyone had left the church my father would be
in the office setting the information down in the church record books. He would be neither delayed nor rushed in
these things.
The importance of church records was something my father
understood. In 1930 the North Dakota
state capitol burned
down and the state’s official records were destroyed. Citizens who had lost their own copies of
birth certificates and were needing official documentation for the purpose of
collecting retirement benefits were able to make use of church records and my
father was on occasion called upon to look things up and make copies for
people. When St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church celebrated its centennial a
book was made that contained copies of all the baptism, confirmations, weddings
& funerals in the church’s history.
I could go on about this process and the way names of people changed
during World War I to down play their German heritage and the challenge of
reading other pastors’ handwriting but I digress.
My dad described the church office as a thoroughfare. The room, as tiny as it was, had three
doors. One to the nave (seen in the
picture), one to the chancel coming out behind the pulpit, and one to the small
set of stairs that could then lead either outside or down to the church
basement . It was a sort of all purpose
room that held the office equipment, church records, paraments and vestments
(in a small closet that had a full length mirror on the door), the sound system, the numbers for the hymn
boards, folding chairs with arm desks (these were used for Confirmation
instruction and any meeting with fewer than five people and thus the
congregation could save money by not having to heat up the basement), a chalk
board, the locked fireproof file cabinet that the trusties used to store the
offerings before the official counting and a bank run was done. (Counting was done on the desk in the office after
church. This use of my father’s desk
lead to the need for what he called “the Saturday night drawer” where he put
everything he needed to stash out of sight for a Sunday morning service. When we first moved there the altar guild even
filled the communion ware on that desk, but my father convinced them that this
could be done in the kitchen and then brought through the office to the altar.) The room contained a large portion of my father’s
personal library and these added filled bookcases probably helped give the room
extra insulation in the winter. Still as
crowded as it was my father had my Confirmation class (all four of us) take a
break to stand up and jump up and down and try to touch the ceiling. He believed that students could think better
if they took time to get the blood pumping.
If the weather was nice he’d tell us to go outside and run a few laps
around the building.
For me as a kid the office held many wonderful little curiosities. There was a small bust of CFW Walther on one
of the top shelves. My father had to
explain who that guy was. The desk had a
small North Dakota state flag that was a gift to my dad from the District President
our first summer in North Dakota. The
center desk drawer contained a small vial of water from the Jordan River that
someone had given him as a souvenir from a trip to the Holy Land. His desk also had his smallest recorder that
he would sometimes use to play the melody of a hymn over the phone to one of
our church organists if they might be unfamiliar with it. There was also this really nifty push button
phone directory with a slide-out drawer that the desk phone sat on. It didn’t have any numbers in it, but it was
fun to see the drawer slide open to the corresponding letter that was
pushed. On the bulletin board above the copy machine were various calendars
and information and then there was a map of North Dakota marked in my father’s
own fastidious colorful way. Every LC-MS
church in the District was marked with a straight pin. The pins had colored beads on them with a
different color for each circuit. Each
pin held two beads but the congregation that was home to what was then called
the circuit counselor (now circuit visitor) had three beads. Our circuit the beads were red then white
with the circuit counselor having a green one added to the end of it (let the
Hungarians understand) the District office had five beads. It was a fascinating little map.
One of the few letters my father wrote me after leaving home
was written some months after this picture was taken. He was writing to me to let me know that he
had received a request for the transfer of my membership from St. Paul’s to
University Lutheran Chapel in Milwaukee.
At the same time he also recorded
receiving my nephew David as a member since my Sister’s family attended
services at Wittenberg Chapel a place that was not officially recognized as a congregation
by the district and thus could not have a membership roll. It was
a bitter sweet moment for him to sever his bond as my pastor. He expressed his hope that I would remain
faithful and always have a church home where the gospel was faithfully preached
and the sacraments were rightly administered.
Happy Father’s Day Dad: my first pastor, who baptized me, confirmed
me, officiated at my wedding and then made sure all those things were properly
documented.
