Chicago Lutheran History: Emmaus Lutheran Church- 1888
In 1896, the German Lutheran churches of Chicago published Geschichte der Gründung und Ausbreitung der zur Synode von Missouri, Ohio und Andern Staaten gehörenden Evangelisch-Lutherischen Gemeinden U. A. C. zu Chicago, Illinois, a history of their growth in the city beginning with First St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, now located on LaSalle and Goethe streets in Chicago. As far as I know, there is no English translation of this document, so I offer this translation to share this history with you. Follow me to get updates about the rest of this work.
The further we extend into the history of German Lutheran churches in Chicago, the less know about many of them. Emmaus Lutheran Church no longer meets at the site described in the translation. The congregation remodelled the building pictured below into one that looks much like the other Luthernan churches built in the early 1900’s. At some point, the Greater Holy Temple Church of God in Christ bought the building.
There is an Emmaus Lutheran Church to the west of this on on Gladys Ave. Some website sleuthing suggests that the two could be the same congregation. If so, Emmaus joined the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), likely in the shake-up in the LCMS in the 1960’s-1970’s. The last statistitcs available for the congregation reported only 15 members in 2017.
Evangelical Lutheran Emmaus Congregation
This congregation is a daughter of St. John Congregation. For a year, the latter had a branch school at Fulton Street near Hoyne Avenue and at Oakley Avenue near Fulton Street, in which there was preaching during the Advent and Lent seasons in the evening and, for a while, on Sunday mornings. For a long time, the members of St. John Congregation living in this area had entertained the desire to found a congregation of their own. It came to be on the second Sunday of Easter, the 2nd of April, 1888. The gospel of the two men from Emmaus gave the congregation its name: Emmaus Congregation. Out of 11 members, who the mother congregation had released the day before, 10 formed the trunk of this congregation, but 9 more members immediately connected themselves. Pastor M. Fülling, previously a traveling preacher in N. Dakota was called as the pastor of the young congregation, and he was installed by President Succop in St. John church on the 12th Sunday after Trinity, the 19th of August. At that time, the new congregation still did not own a church of its own. But already on the same day, the new pastor could lay the foundation stone of the new church on California Avenue and Walnut Street. At that time, the congregation was still small, so it was decided to let only the lower part of the church be completed. The same was suitably furnished, and it was festively dedicated as a house of God on the 25th Sunday after Trinity, the 18th of November, 1888.
At that time, the St. John congregation lovingly had given the daughter their old school property, so Pastor Fülling held school in the same until the spring, 1889. The congregation sold this property and built a second schoolhouse, in which the upper floor was also the parsonage. The number of schoolchildren grew rapidly and so the congregation called the teaching candidate, A. B. Johson from Addison as the teacher in the first class, while the pastor took on the second class, which was given to a female teacher in the following year. On the 25th of October, 1891, the congregation consecrated a new pipe organ. In the same year, the congregation started a mission on Chicago and Lawndale Avenue, from which Bethel Congregation emerged one year later.
In the year 1893, the congregation built a school on Harvard Street near Kedzie, which was dedicated on the 13th Sunday after Trinity, the 27th of August. Teacher A. C. Meyer was called to this school. In the same, sermons are being given every first Sunday afternoon of the month and on Wednesday evenings in Advent and Lent. The congregation presently numbers 85 voting members and 525 communicant members, and it has 175 children in its two schools.
