First Lutheran Church

Duane's take

The way the marker tells it, here's what happened in Waco, and I'm just passin' it along. Back in 1884, a group of Norwegian settlers in Waco had a need, a real specific need, the kind only your own people in your own language on a Sunday morning can fill. So they organized a congregation.

They called it, and take a breath here, the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Ebenezer congregation. That was the name, the whole name, and they wore it with pride. From 1884 onward, worship services were conducted in Norwegian, right there in Waco, Texas.

For decades, that frame building held those services, week after week, year after year, in a language that had crossed an ocean to get there. Then came 1916, the last year Norwegian was spoken from that pulpit. And in 1917, two things happened.

The congregation adopted a new name, First Lutheran Church, cleaner, shorter, easier on a Texan's tongue. And that original frame building, the one that had stood since 1884, was replaced. What went up in its place was a Gothic Revival structure.

Lancet windows reaching upward the way Gothic Revival buildings do, and an asymmetrical facade that gives the place a character all its own. A Norwegian congregation, a frame building, a new name, and then stone and pointed arches on the Texas plains. That's the whole arc of it, right there.

What the marker says

This congregation was organized in 1884 to serve Waco's Norwegian population. Originally known as the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Ebenezer congregation, the church conducted worship services in Norwegian until 1916. In 1917, the name First Lutheran Church was adopted, and the frame building used by the congregation since 1884 was replaced with a Gothic Revival structure. The building features lancet windows and an asymmetrical facade.