By Tom Ganser
Correspondent
On April 24, La Grange United Methodist Church will celebrate 100 years of spiritual leadership in its current building that was dedicated in 1916 during a re-consecration service at 10 a.m., one hour later than the regular time for Sunday worship.
During the service, the Lord’s table, baptismal font and pulpit will each be re-consecrated. Bishop HeeSoo Jung of the Wisconsin Annual Conference, will participate in the service.
The church has its origins in the 1837 Wisconsin Methodist circuit called the Aztalan Mission, which covered most of southeast Wisconsin. By 1861, regular church services were held in the schoolhouse that stood on the west side of Highway H. That year Benjamin Ward donated land and in 1870 the church building was dedicated as the Free Church of La Grange, used by two congregations, the Protestant Methodists and the Universalists.
In 1913 the church building was refurbished, with the addition of a basement and many improvements. It burned to the ground on Nov. 14, 1915. The congregation rebuilt, and on Oct. 6, 1916, the new building was dedicated. Because the Methodist Quarterly Conference meeting was in Whitewater that day, the bishop, 125 pastors and about 275 other people attended the dedication and dinner.
Following payment for the entire cost of construction, the church was deeded to the Wisconsin Methodist Conference. In 1949, the present stained glass windows were installed.
Following Sunday’s re-consecration service, attendees will be able to view photos and artifacts, including the original pulpit from the Free Church of La Grange. All are invited to attend a pig roast after the service and to visit with current and past members of LUMC, as well as with Bishop Hee-Soo Jung.
The Rev. Don Norman, current pastor for LUMC, said the centennial celebration “will not so much be looking back 100 years as looking forward to our future as a community of believers serving God in the La Grange community,” as represented in the church’s motto: Serving God and Our Community.
“What we do on the 24th in our service of re-consecration will be a pledge to renewal and service, a moving forward not backward,” Norman said.
“We are grateful to our past, the many lives of faith that have helped us be who we are today,” Norman reflected. “We give thanks for these many lives and build on that faithfulness as we the people of La Grange United Methodist Church move forward guided by God’s grace and mercy into our future as servants of Christ.”
LUMC is one of five congregations that comprise the Whitewater Area Regional Ministries (WARM), along with First United Methodist Church, Richmond United Methodist Church, Bethel United Methodist Church (BUMC), Cristo la Roca Ministerio Methodista Unida, and UW-Whitewater United Methodist Ministry.
Former LUMC pastors, the Reverends J. Colby Martin, Joyce Rinehart, Sue D’Alessio and Jean Ehnert Nicholas will be in attendance Sunday.
D’Alessio said the people of LUMC are “faithful, musical, caring, energetic, supportive, involved, generous, hopeful and genuine people of God. They have a great awareness of life and how their faith connects them with one another, with the world and with God. They gave me the gifts of love and acceptance and I loved and cared for them as we served and learned and cooked and cared and studied and wept and laughed and lived together across the years.”
The former pastors also shared some memories.
“My fondest memory is the warmth and caring I received from the congregation as a young, naive and freshly minted minister from seminary,” Martin said. “I often wonder who served whom. Perhaps it shows that the best relationships are those where both parties feel they were the lucky one,” he said. “I have a beautiful memory quilt with squares sewn by individuals representing various events during my pastorate, which I will bring with me to the celebration.”
Rinehart said the congregation’s commitment to music is a mainstay of worship and holidays.
“The choir was there every Sunday providing fitting faith-filled music and it was on more than one Sunday that many members of the choir jumped up, dropped their robes and raced for the door to answer the call as a first responder in the community. The first Sunday all their pagers went off and I nearly needed their services myself,” she said.
Nicolas’ favorite memories of her appointment at LUMC included “the commitment to missions led by Shirley Taylor and others in the congregation.”
Asked why celebrate a century of worship in the La Grange church, Susan Bresser, the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Whitewater, said a “church that has a strong sense of history will have a better sense of identity to build on for the future.
“It’s good for LUMC to rediscover how the church came into being, because that gives the community a focus on what it means to be Body of Christ. This kind of celebration allows the church community to tell the story and that can truly only strengthen to move forward into God’s future,” Bresser said.
