100 Years of Lutherans on the Hill

Have you ever been invited by a friend to attend a family birthday party for someone to whom you're not related? You're the outsider there--treated kindly by, but still a stranger to, the distant relatives who have returned for the party; unable to share in the "remember when?" stories or insider references; eager to spend all your time latched onto the one or two people there whom you do know, etc. Know what I'm talkin' 'bout? I experienced a bit of that myself today.

My dad is a member of the congregation of Bethel Lutheran Church in Battleview, ND. My mom was a member of another Lutheran church about six miles away where my siblings and I were members with her, and Dad attended church there with us without ever changing over his membership to that congregation. After my mom died six years ago, Dad began attending church in Battleview again, and now when I return with my wife and children to visit him and my stepmom, we all go to Bethel for church.

Today that church celebrated its 100th birthday with church services, a meal, and an afternoon program--a six-hour extravaganza! Church members had asked my wife and kids and I to provide music, so we spent a few evenings this past week rehearsing some songs around the piano at home. Today we left at 5:30 A.M. Mountain Time in order to have a few minutes at Dad and Beverly's house before we all drove to town. The drive through the Killdeer Mountains at that early hour was lovely, and we even stopped to visit with an unexpected wayfarer munching along the side of the road:

After arriving at Dad's and visiting for a few minutes, we got in our separate vehicles and drove to Battleview, arriving at 9:30 A.M. Central Time for 10:00 church and finding a crowd already in place. Organizers had rented and erected a huge tent on the lawn north of the church to accommodate the very, very large throng gathered for the celebration. Although the church itself was open for touring, the service was held outdoors beneath the tent with a trailer at one end serving as the platform for the altar.

The two-hour service included a baptism (with nine sponsors!), communion, and lots of special music--including an unexpected performance by us! The pastor greeted us as we arrived, conversed with our daughters, learned that one of the songs we had prepared for the afternoon program (during which we had been told we would be performing) was "Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying," and decided it would be the perfect song to follow "Jesus Loves Me" during the service instead. It went just fine, as did "Jesus Loves Me," sung by all the children in attendance in a spur-of-the-moment children's choir assembly by the pastor.

He did the same thing for the songs sung by the adult choir: "Who's going to come up and sing in the choir today? Come on up, come on up!" And quite a few (Susan and I among them) got up, went to the front, grabbed a hymnal (each one bearing an inscription on the front cover to indicate that it had been given to Bethel in memory of my grandparents John and Olga), and sight-read--in four-part harmony--a couple of hymns. That was one of many moments that made the day feel like a tent revival.

1. First of all, we were gathered for a church service beneath a tent!
2. Second, there were several invitations--both during church and the afternoon program--to anybody who felt so moved to get up and offer some music or some words about their memories of the church.
3. Third, the pastors there (the current one, a previous one invited to deliver the day's sermon, his pastor wife, a synod representative, and a lay minister) kept offering amens and hallelujahs when they liked what one another was saying in the pulpit.
4. Fourth, the music consisted of a lot of "old time" hymns--familiar tunes, familiar words, very Christ-centered . . . just the thing I'd imagine folks would burst into during an actual tent revival (but with no snake handling, fainting, or speaking in tongues).

The two-hour service (very optimistic, celebratory, optimistic) was followed by a delicious meal served by the ladies of a sister congregation in Powers Lake: ham, chicken, potato salad, cole slaw (with ring noodles in it . . .), buns, crudités, coffee, lemonade, and ice cream. A couple hours later was the program, which featured lots of music, "words" from representatives of various groups (this congregation, that congregation, this group from Bethel church, that synod, etc.), and a releasing of balloons by the children. Our girls sang "He Is Good" by themselves and were joined by their mother for "Come to Jesus" (I accompanied on clavinova both those songs and the one from the morning). My dad played his accordian, and his cousin Lee Ann read excerpts from letters of congratulations that had arrived from far and wide. My childhood friend Kayo and three other gentlemen from the area used to sing in a quartet called The Generation Gap, and they performed, too.

It was a really great day, actually, even though in visiting with others throughout the day, I was doing a lot of introducing myself and explaining why I was there--to whom I "belonged" or what my connection was to Bethel. Afterwards we returned to Dad and Beverly's for visiting and eating supper before hitting the road again to return home. We paused in New Town at the Four Bears Bridge to admire the scenery of a North Dakota summer evening at Lake Sakakawea: