Gresham Street, London EC2V 7BX
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St Anne's Lutheran Church
Gresham Street, London EC2V 7BX |
History of St Anne's: The story of the present congregation
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History of St Anne's |
Story of the present congregation
A lecture given by the Rev'd Dr Johann Schneider at the 50th Anniversary of St Anne's Lutheran Church
It all began with Dr. Hans-Herbert Kramm, Pastor of St. Mary’s German Lutheran Church. About 1948, when St. Mary’s still worshipped fortnightly, in a room of the former teacher’s house next to her bombed-out church, he started holding the service occasionally in English, for the second generation and mixed-marriage couples. Then in 1949 came the move to the chapel in Sandwich Street and weekly services. That enabled Hans to step up the English services to once a month.
But he soon realised that this was not enough, not only for St. Mary’s people but for the many Lutherans coming here from English-speaking countries. Full-time work was needed. Then help came from Dr. David Ostergren, an American pastor who was the Lutheran World Federation’s Senior Representative in the UK. Through his efforts the LWF agreed to give financial support. Hans Kramm was clear that it should be a new congregation, even if it started under St. Mary’s umbrella - if St. Mary’s itself became bi-lingual there was a real danger of the German-language work ceasing during a war or similar emergency and then not being available any more when needed afterwards.
So St. Mary’s called a young Canadian pastor, Herbert Hartig, to start the new work. He had been recommended by his church president, what would now be called his bishop. Herb was tickled, by Hans, in his enquiring letter, asking, "Can you sing? I don’t mean like an opera singer - but can you sing?" He could, and he sang the liturgy in English or German. He and his wife Margaret arrived in July 1951, and on the 10th Sunday after Trinity (29th July that year) Hans Kramm inducted him into the office of pastor of the new congregation. That was our birthday.
A small committee was the first church council, consisting of Herb as chairman, Cecelia Ostergren (David’s wife) as secretary, Dr Johann Schneider as treasurer and Hans Popper; also Hans Kramm ex officio as Pastor of St. Mary’s, but he only came to meetings when asked on a special occasion. With Margaret Hartig and David Ostergren that made 6 members of the congregation, plus a few other interested people gradually joining. Margaret Schönbuchner, the organist of St. Mary’s, played for us too. We had the Eucharist every Sunday. We used the liturgy recently introduced for St. Mary’s English-language services, with the tunes familiar to that congregation - we still have the hand-written altar book Dr Schneider did for that - and some hymnbooks (without tunes) inherited from the ELCE congregation in Kentish Town. In the introits shown in those books we underlined some syllables in pencil so that we could sing the introits to the Gregorian psalm tones as St. Mary’s did.
For Herb it took a lot of patience with the slow growth - he remembers "8 to 12 attending; it took seven months before we had 16 attending Easter service". Among those joining in the next two years were Eddie and Erna Gratzer, Doris Hedine and some others from the US Embassy and Forces. A jump came when the Hungarian Pastor Károlyfalvi went to Canada, Herb invited the members of his small congregation to join us and they did, e.g. Béla Tóth, Pál Szekeres and Julius Dárula - a real character, he was. A Sunday School was started. In 1953 the Lutheran Council of Great Britain, in which most Lutheran groups in this country are federated, acquired the Church House in Collingham Gardens, and appointed Pastor Lloyd Swantz as Youth Director. Herb started regular evening services at the Church House, but an attempt to evangelise the neighbourhood there had no success. Yet by the time Herb and Margaret returned to Canada in October 1954 we had grown quite a bit, including children and young people.
Next we had for one year as Interim Pastor Dr. James Beasom, just retired from being president of a Californian Lutheran synod. A magnificent preacher, he put in a lot of good work to build up the congregation, both in dealing with people and in getting us to acquire and donate things for use in the Church House chapel: An altar, dedicated to the memory of Hans Kramm after his early death, crucifix and candlesticks, communion vessels. Of Dr. Beasom’s sermons one sentence sticks in my mind: "You must see this Jesus!" - In that year, 1955, Lloyd Swantz acquired Hothorpe Hall as a youth and conference centre for the Lutheran Council and became its first director.
From October 1955 our pastor was Vernon Frazier, previously in Lexington, SC, whom many of you know. His strength was to take the situation by the scruff of the neck and put it right as best he knew. St. Mary’s English Lutheran Church, as we called it, was founded as an independent congregation; but this fact had been kept a bit quiet, because the Lutheran World Federation who financed us was afraid to upset some Anglicans fearful of competition. Vern checked that this fear was groundless, got us to move to the Church House in Collingham Gardens, to take a new name, St. John’s, and to adopt a written constitution. (We had always intended to have one, but other things were more urgent and meanwhile we had worked quite well by custom, English fashion.)
He found that people from the Latvian and Estonian congregations, even the younger generation, would not come to us. He realised that unlike his own preference, they were used to very rare communions, and hoped to win them by reducing ours to once a month. I don’t think it won over a single one, but it took us a generation to get our weekly Eucharist back.
If you have responsibility you have to take decisions, facing a situation new to you with what experience and empathy you have. So you are bound to make mistakes, and I certainly made some bad ones at that time. One of Vernon’s was not to realise that Lutherans in this country are often members of two congregations, whether because of language or distance or less than weekly services or because of their marriage partner, and that just these people may be your most faithful and committed members. Using an American model constitution, inadequately adapted, made them into "associate members" without voting rights. That hurt. Years later, when Vern had retired and came to spend a year with us as "Pastor for Evangelism", the first thing he and I did was to confess our mistakes to each other and have a wonderful reconciliation; we’ve felt good about each other ever since.
After a year with us Vern succeeded David Ostergren as LWF Senior Representative, and a year later, in 1957, helped us to call his friend William Wegener from the same town to succeed him as our pastor. Bill continued on the foundation laid, and healed the wounds of the previous upheaval. We soon had communion twice a month in the morning, and later also once a month in the evening. Eventually, after thorough study, full membership was again made available to those who were also members of another Lutheran congregation. In 1959 Bill married Ellie Bundt, a journalist, and together they started and ran a monthly "St. John’s News" as a lively and informative newletter. Ellie took part in the women’s group which had been running for some time. The congregation grew apace.
Nevertheless the LWF office in Geneva got the strange impression that Bill was not up to the job, and wanted to replace him. But when he submitted his /resignation resignation to the congregational meeting, the Poppers and I roused the opposition and the meeting unanimously rejected the resignation and supported the church council’s letter to LWF asking that Bill should continue. You can imagine that this did wonders for his morale, and he and we went from strength to strength. That year (1960) we celebrated our anniversary, the 9th, on the 10th Sunday after Trinity, with over 100 at the service, and have done so ever since.
Next year saw the founding of the United Lutheran Synod, now our Lutheran Church in Great Britain. We started a preaching station in Balham, South London, held the first Swahili service and started a building fund - the Church House chapel was getting too small for us! In 1963 we joined the Kensington Council of Churches (a little ecumenical milestone for us) and took part in the first joint Reformation service of the many Lutheran congregations in London. Our membership was approaching 200, including about 40 children. In High Wycombe Gottfried Klapper, Hans Kramm’s successor at St. Mary’s, had started a small worship group in German. This was continued in English by Bill Schaeffer, the first Chairman of the United Synod, and became part of our St. John’s. From our North American pastors we learnt from the start to be a very welcoming lot, and have had the joy of constant visitors and of members from 20 or 30 countries from all over the globe.
Meanwhile Bill and Ellie were expecting their second child, Katie. The first one, Diane, was pretty hefty and the Wegeners lived right at the top of the Church House. It was just too much for Ellie’s back. In January 1964 they went back to the States. That month the congregation voted to call Róbert Pátkai to be their new pastor.
In 1956 the Hungarians had revolted against Stalinist rule and had then been suppressed by the Soviet army. Many fled abroad. Among those reaching the UK were Róbert and his fiancée Elizabeth who were promptly married here. Róbert soon restarted the Hungarian congregation. Having to learn English from scratch, it was very courageous of him to take us on; but with hard work and love for people he succeeded. A very few highlights from his time: In 1966 the move to this church of St. Anne and St. Agnes. Later Róbert becoming Chairman of the United Synod - eventually Dean of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain - , also Chairman of the Lutheran Council.
1969 foundation of St. Anne’s Music Society. Early 1988 change of our name to St. Anne’s, to avoid confusion with the name of the building. Before then Pastor Ronald Englund, who had been a missionary in Tanganyika, had restarted the Swahili services on a regular monthly basis. In the 1980s great expansion of the musical work as a means of outreach, by Ron Englund and Peter Lea-Cox, including regular Sunday evening services at St. Anne’s. The problem of integrating this work with that of the main congregation could only be solved late in 1988, after Róbert had resigned, when Ron Englund was elected Pastor and Peter Lea-Cox appointed Cantor.
At the end of 1994 Ron retired on reaching age 65, after a busy and fruitful ministry, and the congregation elected Paul Schmiege (Pastor of a church in Seaford, NY) as his successor. With his agreement we finally adopted our new constitution, which had been a few years in the making, before he arrived in late March with Connie and the children. During the 3-month vacancy Dean Walter Jagucki was nominally in charge, but told me: "You are the gaffer!" I liked this because of the double meaning of the term: According to the Oxford Dictionary, it can mean "the foreman of the gang", and we had a wonderful gang of people helping out, including pastors and especially Brian Fisher; or it can mean "elderly rustic, old fellow", in other words some old geizer standing there propping up a wall! - As Paul is here with us today I shall not say anything about his ministry except that he and Dr. Beasom were the best preachers we have had.
When he had to leave in July 2000 the vacancy was rather longer. For its last few months Bishop Jagucki (as he now is) put Jana Jeruma-Grinberga in charge, whom Paul had already quietly recommended. Having got to know her we elected her, and the welcome we gave her on her induction on 19 May was heart-warming and well-deserved.
Characteristic of our congregation is the enormous turnover of people apart from a small core. This has continually brought us some who have been towers of strength while they were here, like Jim Braulick, Jim Owens, Norman Matson, Jim Dinnage, Darrell Datte and a number of Assistant or Associate Pastors. One of the great problems the turnover has brought is the constant changes of treasurer, with damaging effects on financial policy and on book-keeping. (It’s better now, not least owing to a computer package and people who know how to use it.) One of the best was Jim Christenson - you should have seen him and Karen with Barbara and me, they were about twice as tall! Their elder son Erik now lives in Norway and has turned up here twice recently.
Finally the organists. Margaret Schönbuchner stayed with us even after the move to the Church House. There followed several others, among them Roland Hoyte who came with us to St. Anne’s and St. Agnes’. In 1969 there followed Simon Lindley, who greatly amused our Peter (then 10 years old) with his flamboyant body movements while playing. He founded the Music Society and the lunchtime recitals, and soon went on to St. Albans Cathedral. Next Denys Darlow, who brought his Tilford Bach Festival Choir to perform the Matthew Passion in our 1972 Good Friday service, broadcast by the BBC. He went on ot St. George’s Hanover Square. After him Richard Lyne for 6 years and Bramwell Cook for 9, until Peter Lea-Cox since 1987 who has done such marvellous things for us.
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