Going to church the St. John's Lutheran way

(I thought it would be interesting to use Sundays to focus on Rensselaer's churches and to see how many Sundays I can go before I run out of material. Indiana is richly endowed with religious denominations, with influences from North and South, East and West. This is part of that series of posts.)

Saint John's Lutheran Church is located 2.5 miles north of SR 14 on 700 West. According to the "Church Services Directory" in the Rensselaer Republican, the pastor is David Mueller. Sunday worship is at 10:45 a.m. The church has a website at http://www.sjlms.org/ (which says that pastor is Robert H. Gullion, so the website may not be up-to-date.)

St. John's is the parent church of St. Lukes in Rensselaer. Like St. Luke's, St. Jonh's is affiliated with the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod. For more on Lutheranism and the Missouri Synod, see the links for St. Lukes.

On the south side of the church is the congregation's cemetery.

 

 The present church building is the third structure on the site--the previous two were destroyed by fire according to the Jasper County Interim Report. The present church was built in 1948. The Interim Report lists a date of 1903--this may be the date of the first building on the site.

 

In the early 20th century, the area north of Rensselaer had many inhabitants as farms were smaller and the now tiny towns of Parr and Fair Oaks were booming. Most Lutherans trace their ancestry back to Germany or Scandinavia. The settlers who established St. John's were of German descent.

St. Luke's is built in the late Gothic Revival Style.