About Saint John Lutheran
When I started this blog, I wrote a short description about Prairie Hill, Texas. In the same post, I promised to write a little bit about Saint John Lutheran. Here it is.
Saint John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Prairie Hill, is a congregation of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We are located six miles north of Brenham, Texas, in Washington County.
The congregation of Saint John was founded in 1877 by Pastor C.C. Rudi. The original building stood where our current building is, but burnt down in 1912 (the story is that a kitchen fire at the parsonage got out of control). Out of the fire, the original altar and bell were preserved. I am the 12th pastor (not counting interims) to serve the congregation of Saint John since its founding.
Currently we have two Sunday morning worship services, and have an Average Sunday Attendence of around 150. Our membership is just over 450. In the context of the ELCA, we are a middle sized congregation. We are neither a smaller congregation (less than 100 ASA) or a larger congregation (over 250 ASA).
Saint John faces many of the same challenges as other mid-sized rural congregations. Often our volunteers are overworked, and there are questions about what the future holds for rural areas.
We face many of the same economic issues as other rural areas - rising costs, decreasing values. Further, like many rural areas, we have seen many of our young people drawn away by life in the city.
But we are also blessed with many gifts. We are a thriving congregation, filled with a sense of mission and a passion for ministry. We often gather together not only for worship, but for fellowship and learning. We continue to seek ways to minister not only to those already in this congregation, but to those in the wider community. We are blessed with able, excited volunteers.
At the present, we are discerning together what the future might hold for our ministries and mission. We are seeking, through prayer and conversation, to discover what new adventures God is preparing to lead us on.
Learn more about Saint John Lutheran Church on our website.
2 comments:
In South Carolina, many of our rural churches are becoming much less rural. As the city sprawl reaches into the outter edges of our cities, the churches that have managed to remain vibrant are now beginning to see growth.
The challenge for some of these congregations seems to be enduring the lean times until such time when the sprawl reaches a point where they become centrally located.
Yes, that is certainly a possibility here as well. As Houston grows closer and closer to us, we see ever more people who live here, but work in Houston, as well as many people coming here to retire from Houston.
I saw something similar on my internship. It was at a congregation in Northern Virginia, on the edge of Fairfax County. Twenty years ago, it was a small town surrounded by farmland about an hour outside of DC. When I was there it was a burgeoning suburban community.
As with all things, this has positives and negatives. But the temptation is to think that the only mission if to preserve the building/membership/property until the suburbs arrive. I think we need to be more intentional about focusing on the mission and ministry being done by rural churches. The ministry here, whether the suburbs ever arrive or not, is a vital one.
We need to anticipate what might happen, while still ministering in our current situation
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