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Farewell service

Subhead
Kenneth Lutheran Church will host its final worship service Sunday, June 28
Lead Summary
,
By
Mavis Fodness

After more than 120 years of weddings, funerals and worship services, Kenneth Lutheran Church will close its doors at the end of the month.
A final worship service will be at 10 a.m. Sunday, June 28, followed by a catered meal.
The small building with a proud white steeple housed hundreds of summer vacation Bible school classes, cubed beef suppers, bridal showers and community gatherings.
Congregation members like Joyce Oldre will cherish these memories long after the empty building is someday gone.
She said most of the church’s people accept the decision as a sign of the times.
“With our shrinking rural population, we just aren’t attracting new families,” Oldre said. “And everything costs the same — lights, water, maintenance — no matter how many people show up on Sunday.”
According to church records, there are 105 baptized members in the church located in a town whose official population is 67 (in 2013).
But recent attendance averages show 20 to 25 regular attendees for Sunday services. Some days there are fewer than 15.
Consequently, there are fewer available congregation members to share the load of volunteer work and financial support to make a church function.
But accepting the inevitable doesn’t mean it’s easy to let go, especially for longtime members.
“LeRoy and I were married in this church in 1958, and all our children (Kyle, Keith and Kari) were baptized and confirmed there,” Oldre said, noting that her own membership started prior to that.
LeRoy’s grandfather, Nels Oldre, donated a corner of his farm for the church cemetery, and until the 1960s, his father, Paul, and uncle, Gust, maintained the cemetery for the church.
Ken Hoime’s family history dates back to the turn of the century before the church was built. His grandparents on both sides of his family — Isak and Kari Isakson and Knudt and Anna Hoime — were also early church leaders.
“I come from way back in the church,” Ken said, adding that the recent decision to close the church wasn’t easy.
“It’s like a family. You get to know people you trust.”
 
Church history dates back to turn of century
According to the church history books, the Kenneth Lutheran congregation began meeting in 1894, several years before the town was incorporated.
It was first known as "Battle Plain Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church," and members gathered in the Battle Plain School House before the church was built in 1906.
The building cost $350. Supplies were hauled by horse and wagon from Magnolia, and congregation members contributed time and labor.
Services and instruction were spoken in Norwegian until the 1920s, when English was used occasionally at Sunday evening services. The pastor and his family usually spent their evenings in the homes of congregation members.
At one time, its membership rolls were twice the current attendance, and in its prime, the Kenneth church hosted 30 to 40 children in Sunday school and hosted all-day, two-week-long summer vacation Bible school.
 But the church, like the town, has lost people as neighboring farms have grown larger and farther apart.
In the past 20 years, the town bid farewell to its grocery store, bank, elevator, hardware store and other longtime businesses that have been periodically replaced and closed.
 
Letting go
In recent years congregation leaders have been grappling with the notion of closing the Kenneth church, and in February congregation members voted to approve a plan toward “dissolution.”
In a letter to church members, Pastor Kerry Boese explained the transition process and upholding congregational duties during the closing of the church.
“Let’s not allow our kind concern and generosity to waiver, for that generosity and spirit has been the legacy of our forefathers and foremothers, including those who first established Kenneth Lutheran Church,” Boese said.
He reminded worshippers of the words on the parish website, “We at Kenneth Lutheran Church seek to continue the legacy initiated by our forefathers and foremothers:  to establish a home, that is, to ever grow in the midst of changes so that we can ‘bring the Gospel home’ to new hearts in new times and under new circumstances.”
He admitted this growth is approaching a “kind of death,” but he said God’s word will live on in church members who continue to believe.
“Your faith, talents and willingness to serve will go on … though under new circumstances, in relationship to new associations, in a continuing faith-life with its new dynamics,” Boese wrote in his letter.
“Let’s end well. Let’s end strong. Kenneth Lutheran strong. For, in faith, it is not an end, really, but a new beginning.”
 
June 28 farewell service and catered meal
Those interested in attending the June 28 farewell service at Kenneth Lutheran are asked to contact Marilyn, 220-1115, or Vicky, 920-9141, so they can plan numbers for the meal.

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