St. Paul Lutheran Church

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of St. Paul Lutheran Church out in Gillespie County. Now, when folks talk about the oldest rural Lutheran church in the county, this is the one they're talking about.

It all started with seventeen charter members, which, depending on your Sunday mornings, might sound like a crowd or might sound like a very determined handful. Either way, they had themselves a pastor, the Reverend M. Haag, and they had a vision.

What they built on June 22, 1884, was a frame building with walls of rough boxing planks. Twenty-five feet wide, thirty feet deep, and standing tall with a forty-foot tower reaching up like it had something to prove. The whole thing came together for six hundred dollars.

Now, I want you to sit with that number for just a moment. Six hundred dollars. Seventeen members, one pastor, a forty-foot tower, and six hundred dollars.

There is something quietly astonishing about that arithmetic. They built something that lasted. And they weren't finished with it.

Come 1890, that congregation enlarged the building, finished out the interior, and put in a beaded ceiling. A beaded ceiling. Out here in the Texas Hill Country, those seventeen families and their children had decided their church deserved something fine to look up at.

Then, in 1928 and 1929, the work continued again. An altar niche was added, the interior was finished with sheet rock, and the exterior was covered with tin. Layer by layer, decade by decade, those plain boxing-plank walls kept being made more worthy of what was happening inside them.

Some buildings just tell you everything about the people who raised them.

What the marker says

Oldest rural Lutheran church in Gillespie County. The Rev. M. Haag served as first pastor. Charter members numbered 17. A frame building with walls of rough boxing planks was dedicated June 22, 1884. Size: 25 x 30 feet with a 40-foot tower. Cost: $600. In 1890 building was enlarged, interior finished, beaded ceiling installed. Altar niche was added, interior finished with sheet rock and exterior covered with tin in 1928-29. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1969