Written by Laurie K. Sommers, Preserve Nordic Churches Project Manager, 2017-2019 The congregation of Augustana Lutheran Church in Sioux City, Iowa, was grateful. It was 1919. World War 1 was finally over, and the young people of the church had come home safe and sound. As a gift of thanksgiving to God for war’s end […]
For more than three decades now, the church on the prairie just west of Rugby, North Dakota has sat silent and vacant, its proud gray steeple belying the toll that weather and neglect has taken on the clapboard siding and checkered roof below. Once upon a time, Tunbridge Lutheran Free Church — built in 1914 […]
Written by Laurie K. Sommers, Preserve Nordic Churches Project Manager, 2017-2019 We all have a sacred place that warms our heart and fills our memory with the spirits of those who have gone before. It may not be the most architecturally significant place. The community that once supported it may have dwindled or changed. But […]
Written by Laurie K. Sommers, Preserve Nordic Heritage Churches Project Manager, 2017-2019 I was chatting by phone with the pastor of Savo Evangelical Lutheran Church outside Frederick, South Dakota as part of the Preserve Nordic Heritage Churches Project when I heard something fascinating and surprising: “The church was designed by the minister’s daughter.” I wanted […]
