New Churches

Faure ~ Debussy ~ Franck: Violin Sonatas; Joshua Bell, violin; Jean-Yves Thibaudet, piano

On a cold, stormy Sunday morning in January of 1969, I was a three-year-old munchkin in a Sunday School classroom. A blizzard was on its way and Mom and Dad figured that they could better prepare for the fury to come if they skipped church and sent the kids to Sunday School with the neighbors. After Sunday School, R. and E. H. took me and my sisters home and everyone else at the church hit the road to make it home before the storm, leaving the church dark at about twelve o’clock.

At one o’clock, the church caught fire and burned to the ground, in an unlikely, yet synergistic web of leaping fire, soot-caked snow, fierce heat, unbeatable cold and a howling wind. The furnace had exploded in the room directly beneath the Sunday School room I had sat in only ninety minutes before. Many brave souls stood at a distance to witness the demise of a ninety-year-old church. At one point during the raging tempest, as he observed the surreal goings-on, Pastor Sponheim glimpsed, then caught, a single renegade page from the Lutheran Hymnal as it escaped out of the blazing arms of the firestorm before him, and he held it up, the next Sunday, before the congregation when it met at the school gymnasium.

“Here,” he seemed to say, “right here, with this paper, on this day and in this place, we begin our journey, the hand of God in the hand of his church in Bruce, to rebuild, not the church, for that is who we are, but to rebuild our place of worship and continue the work of His kingdom, here in His royal and holy realm of Bruce.”

On the morning of October 30, 1969, just down the street from the site of the old burned down church, only ten months distance from the fire, the congregation of Grace Lutheran Church stood in the brilliant sun outside of the edifice in front of them to say a sound and stalwart prayer of dedication, committing the building’s structural integrity, its beauty and its purpose, simply and pointedly, to the Glory of God. A worship service of thanks and praise ensued, inside the building, with nineteen pews, a choir loft, a Baldwin piano, a Baldwin organ, eight big globed lights, five tall stained glass windows, an altar, an altar rail and a biiiiiig pulpit.

One year ago last June, Wallace Presbyterian Church finished its long sojourn in the desert with a resplendent house of worship, complete with a seven-sided sanctuary, over four hundred seats, a cupola, a steeple, a handsome wooden platform with a lectern, two multi-media silver screens and a nine-foot Steinway D concert grand piano. In July of that year, we dedicated the piano to the service of the Lord with a simple but sincere prayer and a recital. Our performances included songs by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Aaron Copland, Antonin Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81, and Cesar Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in A Major (1886) with a flute player, and his flute, standing in for the violinist, and his or her violin.

On a warm, calm Sunday morning in March of 1969, a horse-drawn single mouldboarded plow, one that tilled the land on our farm more than a hundred years ago, broke the ground for the new church building in Bruce. One of my favorite spirituals:

Keep your hand on the plow, hold on

If you want to get to Heav’n I tell you how

Just keep you hand on the Gospel plow

Keep your hand on the plow, hold on

If that plow stays in your hand

Land you straight in the Promised land

Keep your hand on the plow, hold on

Credits: To Pastor Sponheim taking the healm of a crew with no ship, pointing in the direction of the Almighty and saying, “There!”