The members of Church of the Redeemer have spent the past 15 years without a permanent home.
They’ve met on Sunday afternoons — so as not to interfere with their hosts’ Sunday-morning worship schedules — at churches in Roseville, Arden Hills and St. Paul.
Two years ago, church officials learned that a St. Paul-area church would be put up for sale, said Rev. Paul Calvin, who has served as a pastor at Church of the Redeemer, an Anglican church, since 2007. Not long after, someone offered to give them an interest-free loan to purchase the building.
And then, last May, the sellers informed Redeemer officials that they had changed their minds. After more than a year of planning for the opportunity, “this closed door was discouraging,” Calvin said.
But the Lord works in mysterious ways.
This summer, a member of the Church of the Redeemer happened to have a fruitful chat with a neighbor: The neighbor said he heard St. Stephanus Lutheran Church, in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood, was going to close. The neighbor happened to be the brother-in-law of a St. Stephanus member.
Church of the Redeemer officials toured St. Stephanus in August, and they decided to move forward with a plan to buy the building.
When Redeemer officials asked how much St. Stephanus hoped to sell it for, they got the shock of their lives, Calvin said. The sale price — of the building and its contents — was $1.
‘A blessing’
The Rev. Andy Thompson, pastor for St. Stephanus Lutheran Church in St. Paul, talks about his own history with the Frogtown church. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
The members of St. Stephanus on Sept. 28 unanimously voted to approve that plan.
“We’re not greedy people,” said Rev. Andy Thompson, the pastor at St. Stephanus. “We have enough. You can monetize your thing and get every last bit out of it, or you can be a blessing to other people.”
Thompson said he’s been at St. Stephanus for 16 years and his goal was for the church to be a blessing to the people of Frogtown.
“This building was a blessing to us. It will be a blessing to Redeemer. And I am absolutely convinced, after my interactions with the Redeemer people, that they are going to be a blessing to this community.”
St. Stephanus will hold its last worship service on Dec. 28 and close its doors on Dec. 31. Church of the Redeemer will take ownership on Jan. 1, and their first Sunday worship — their first-ever morning service — will be at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 4.
Thompson said he and other members of the church are thrilled that the building will continue to be a church.
“It gave our people a lot of comfort to know that there was going to be another church here,” said Thompson, who was married at St. Stephanus 25 years ago next week. “The sadness that it’s not ours is real, but it’s a beautiful church. I am incredibly glad that we were able to gift this space to them.”
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The timing of the sale is especially poignant, he said.
“How glad I am that the heart of Christmas is kept in all of this,” he said. “The gift of Jesus didn’t stop with the shepherds in the fields, it didn’t stop with Magi from the East, it didn’t stop with Joseph or Mary, but went into the world to be a gift for all. In the same way, the gift of Jesus and the gift of community lived in this building doesn’t have to stop with St. Stephanus, it can go out as a gift to the people of Redeemer as well.
“Jesus, when he’s sending his disciples out to bear witness to who he is in Matthew 10, has a line about ‘freely you have received, freely give,’” he said. “What a gift to us that, with our last act as a church, we get to do that.”
Aging congregation
St. Stephanus, a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, has about 220 members, with 50 to 60 regularly coming to Sunday service, Thompson said.
Children’s artwork on display at St. Stephanus Lutheran Church. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
The congregation is aging, and “attendance is shrinking, giving is shrinking,” he said. “We’re not, despite our efforts, getting any younger. We’re not connecting as well to the community, despite trying. The reality is that most of the work was being shouldered by a very small group of people for a very long time, and they were getting very tired, and there was nobody to really step up and do anything.”
The church, built in 1890 at Lafond and Grotto to serve a German Lutheran congregation, “always (has) something that needs to be repaired,” Thompson said. “Not having the resources to be able to take care of everything all the time has been hard.”
The closure of the church, which also used to have a school, has been discussed for years, he said. In 1951, a new school — Central Lutheran School — was built at 775 N. Lexington Parkway, and St. Stephanus School was demolished. Central Lutheran School closed in 2018 because of dwindling enrollment, he said.
“People move away, people go to other churches, people do all sorts of things in the world,” Thompson said. “What started as a very white Germanic congregation in Frogtown back when there were white Germans moving to the area … stayed pretty white and Germanic, with a little bit of Scandinavian thrown in.”
St. Stephanus tried doing Hmong ministry, and an Eritrean congregation has used the space, but there was not a critical mass to keep it going, he said.
“Frogtown is Frogtown, and you have to appreciate Frogtown,” he said. “The neighborhood changes all the time. Some 60 percent are renters, so there’s an instability to the community here. People just vanish.”
The church “probably could have continued on for another year or two or three, but people were saying, ‘It’s OK. It’s OK,’” he said. “It’s hard, and it sucks. I feel terrible for my 80-year-olds and 90-year-olds, but here we are.”
Everyone welcome
Some members of St. Stephanus will worship at Jehovah Lutheran Church on Thomas Avenue following the closure, but some plan to continue worshiping at 739 Lafond.
The Rev. Paul Calvin, rector of Church of the Redeemer. (Courtesy of Paul Calvin)
Everyone is welcome at Church of the Redeemer, which was “planted” in 2010 by Church of the Cross, an Anglican Church in Hopkins, Calvin said.
“There’s a sadness to (the closing), but we’ve also tried to say, ‘The door is open. This remains Christ’s church.’ We’re stewards of it as Church of the Redeemer. But it’s really exciting to feel like we’re taking up a mantle that has been there and is not going to just be dropped.”
“We are incredibly thankful and, frankly, are often left speechless by the beauty and the resources of this building,” Calvin said. “But even more than that, we’re grateful for the grace of God shown to us through the generosity of St. Stephanus Lutheran in the midst of scarcity, even in the midst of them closing their doors. They have given freely, generously and joyfully, giving themselves first to the Lord, and then by God’s will to us.”
Church of the Redeemer, which has about 140 members, began worshiping at St. Stephanus at 4:30 p.m. on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 30.
“As we celebrate Christmas for the first time in our new home, we remember that Jesus lacked a home at his birth,” Calvin said. “Thanks to the generosity of St. Stephanus, 739 Lafond will continue to be a place where our sojourning Savior is worshipped, where gifts received are freely given, and where the weary find a place of settled rest.”
During their search, Church of the Redeemer members turned to Psalms 84, he said. “It starts, ‘How lovely is your dwelling place,’ which I think is how we see St. Stephanus. There’s a lot of loveliness to it,” he said.
The nave, looking towards the vestibule, is seen at St. Stephanus Lutheran Church. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
It continues: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise!”
“It has felt like we have flitted around all kinds of different places,” said Calvin, noting that church officials kept materials on two big rolling cabinets. “We’ve been sojourners in lots of places, and it just feels like a miracle that the Lord has provided us with more than we can ask or imagine. The church is its people, but buildings are just a valuable resource and a visible sign of that church. We’re excited to put down roots in Frogtown.”
Investing in Frogtown
A poster communicates that the Church of the Redeemer will begin its worship services at St. Stephanus Lutheran Church in St. Paul starting the first Sunday in January. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)
When Redeemer officials offered to pay for the building, St. Stephanus officials said they would prefer to have that money invested in Frogtown, Calvin said.
“Their board president said, ‘Well, what would we do with the money? We’ve voted to dissolve as a congregation. We would have to allocate those resources — whatever you pay us — to someplace else,’” Calvin said.
Redeemer officials plan to spend the first part of the year getting a sense of how to be good stewards of the building and getting to know other local churches and organizations, Calvin said.
“There are things that we bring as a congregation, but we’d really like to get a sense of our particular calling,” he said. “We want to learn about other things that are happening within the neighborhood, too.”
The Redeemer congregation takes pride in its Christian hospitality. “We’re very hospitable people,” he said. “We are people who love one another. Worship is a really significant value, and I think a strength of our congregation. … We’ve tried to be faithful with what we’re doing, and it’s made it fruitful.”
Calvin said he loves that the church is on a corner in the midst of the neighborhood. “For us, in terms of values, we really feel like being a faithful presence within (Frogtown) is an important part of our calling as Christians,” he said.
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Thompson’s favorite part of St. Stephanus is a bulletin board in the lobby area that lists all of the church’s activities in the neighborhood. “These are things that we worked at, worked towards, helped support,” he said.
One flier — “Being the Hands and Feet of Christ” — advertises the church’s monthly food distribution. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me – Matthew 25:40,” it reads.
“This has been a blessing. It has been a gift,” Thompson said as he packed books into boxes in his office last week. “This place, this congregation has been a gift to me. It has been a gift, I think, to our community. It has been a gift in so many people’s lives. And I am forever grateful to the people here, to God, to them both for, for giving me that gift. I hope that I got to be a gift to them.”
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