Tunbridge Lutheran Church celebrates new life

Submitted Photo The Tunbridge Lutheran Church stands with new siding, new roof, and restored steeple in its spot six miles west of Rugby.
The Tunbridge Lutheran Church Preservation Society will celebrate a milestone in a project to bring the 100-plus-year old building back to life on Saturday, May 28.
The activities at the church will begin with a Lutheran service at 10 a.m.
“It’s a Saturday, but there will be a church service,” said Marilyn Niewoehner, who, with her husband Dale, made arrangements to have Craig Schweitzer, Bishop of the Western North Dakota Synod, serve communion at the service. “The officiant is Gary Wendel for the service. He’s not a minister, so he’s Mr. Wendel.”
Niewoehner said the service would not be held through the Western North Dakota Synod, since the Tunbridge Lutheran Church congregation no longer exists.
“Anyone can come to the service,” she said, adding attendees did not have to be members of the Lutheran Church.
A ceremony to donate the Dwight Jelsing Memorial Bell, which stands outside of the church, will follow the service.
Bernard Arcand will provide music during the service and the opening ceremony, which will take place at 1 p.m. A lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs, and beverages, including beer, will be served for a free-will offering at 11 a.m.
Other special guests for the day include Shane Engeland, president of the Geographical Center Historical Society and executive director of the Prairie Village Museum.
Although the weatherworn church had stood alone and forlorn on the prairie six miles west of Rugby for decades, it occupied a special place in the hearts of many who grew up in the area. Some attended the church as youngsters before the former congregation there held their last service in 1988.
Two people with connections to the church spearheaded an effort to bring the building back to life.
Terry Jelsing, a descendant of Anfin Jelsing, a Norwegian immigrant farmer who donated land for the church more than 100 years ago, spearheaded the effort to revive the building, along with his cousin, Jason Bednarz.
After Anfin Jelsing’s land donation, the first Lutheran church built on that spot burned down in 1911. The present building replaced the first church when it was completed in 1914.
Jelsing said Bednarz made a large financial contribution to turn their idea to preserve the aging building into reality.
Jelsing, who now serves as the president of the Tunbridge Lutheran Church Preservation Society, said the building’s new incarnation as a community center would allow religious events to take place.
“But the focus is on the entire community,” he said. “So, by keeping that open, we’re also opening the doors to the possibility of family reunions; special services that families would want for their reunions, maybe. It’s an intimate space and it’s really about sharing it with people.”
Jelsing said the society intended to keep the building open to many possibilities. However, he added, even though the church would no longer be used by a congregation for religious services, the building’s identity as a church would remain.
“One thing about the way we think about restoring this is preservation-minded,” he noted. “We don’t want to turn it into something of our thinking so much; it’s about preserving the thoughts that were there because the charm of the place is this historical context.
“It’s like a time capsule, walking into a place out of time and appreciating it for those values and honoring our ancestors and our relatives and the people who used the place,” he added. “It’s also about honoring the land. It’s honoring a much bigger cultural concept of who we are. It brings us identity, and it’s not really our place to change that.”
Jelsing said he remembered attending sunrise services at the church as a young child with his grandparents. “There was no central heating,” he said, so the chilly nave and the smell of pancakes and coffee wafting up from the basement endeared him to the church. During the services, the pastor and congregants spoke Norwegian, “which I don’t understand.”
Years later, he occupies a position as a “custodian of the church and cemetery,” along with other members of the society.
The church boasts new siding, a new roof and a rebuilt steeple. The building’s interior needs what Jelsing said are “minor repairs.”
The exterior repairs were the first phase of the project to restore the building, he said. The interior work and community involvement as a 501(c) 3 nonprofit, will continue in two more phases. Interior repairs will include installing railings and protecting its stained-glass windows.
Jelsing said the front part of the building would house interpretive materials.
“We’ll have a donor recognition area in that part, and then eventually, we’ll have a photo essay of old pictures and brief history, so when a visitor does come in, they’ll have an interpretive panel to get the gist of what the place was about and who was involved in it,” he noted.
Jelsing said the preservation society planned to establish an endowment fund to provide for the building’s upkeep and other needs, including maintaining the cemetery on the church grounds.
“You do have choices that would go into that,” he said of donation options for people interested in helping the society. “Some may be interested in the cultural heritage of the structure itself and want to see that concern. Some donors might have family that is interred in the grounds and might want to help preserve that.
“And the idea is that once you build up a fund like that, it takes care of itself in perpetuity. That way, the burden doesn’t come down on just a few individuals as time goes on,” he said of the fund.
“I’m surprised (at the outcome),” he said of the society’s work to preserve the church. “Once we finished it, we were pretty happy that we saved the building. I’m thrilled about all that.”
More information and photos of the church are available on the Tunbridge Lutheran Church Society page on Facebook.