90th Anniversary Launched on Palm Sunday

The people of Central enter the Great North Doors in procession to begin the 11:00 a.m. service on Palm Sunday, April 5. (Photo by Barb Brown)

Palm Sunday is traditionally commemorated as Founders Day at Central Lutheran Church.  It was on Palm Sunday 1919 that a small group of people worshiped together for the first time and officially established Central Lutheran Church.  This years Founders Day was a very special occasion:  the beginning of Central's 90th Anniversary Year!

Central’s founding pastor, J. A. O. Stub, said that Central must strive to be a real church home for people of all conditions and ages.  It must, he said, “teem with activity.”

“Its door must be open to welcome all, irrespective of antecedents or social position.  It must be ‘our Father’s house’ where all can feel at home.  The Church does not exist so much for its members as for the opportunity that it gives them to serve the common Lord,” said Stub.

For 90 years the people of Central Lutheran Church in downtown Minneapolis have been living out Stub’s vision, making Central a place where all are welcome.

Today, nearly 50 ministry teams, consisting of hundreds of people, carry out the day to day mission of this remarkable faith community.

And, in this 90th anniversary year, Central will again have the rare opporunity to “welcome the whole church” as it offers significant hospitality to the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, meeting across the street at the Convention Center in August.  We’ve done this before including the 1957 meeting of the Lutheran World Federation, the 1960 constituting convention of the American Lutheran Church and the 1995 ELCA Churchwide assembly.

This will be a year to celebrate the past in order to become empowered for the future as we live out the vision to bring hope and healing to the world in the name of Christ our Lord.

 

333 South Twelfth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55404
612-870-4416