Pair of congregations remembered for community service

“I think a big reason that we were able to stay together as long as we did is that the six people became like a family,” Laurel Presbyterian clerk of session Chris Truttmann said of the now disbanded congregation with a building just yards from the Hager City post office in Hager City. Truttmann said that knowing what was happening in each other’s lives was important and a highlight of Sunday attendance. The church didn’t just care for itself though.

“It was just automatic…to be able to care for people beyond our four walls,” she said of the church and its concern for the larger community’s welfare. With six members in the Hager City congregation when it held its last services November 22, after beginning in a schoolhouse 128 years before.

Coming into being as a congregation on September 11, 1892, Laurel Presbyterian began when a group of people met at the Hager City schoolhouse with the motive of starting a church. Construction of the church building began in August of 1893 and was completed December 2, 1893 on land purchased from the St. Paul Land Company for the sum of $1. The church itself was started with a loan secured for $400, or $12,395 in today’s dollars, once adjusted for inflation. Its total building cost, however, was higher. Speaking of the St. Paul Land Company though, there’s more than a passing connection with the local area.

“The president of the company was named J. W. Hager, and that’s why it’s called Hager City,” Truttmann said of the company and its connection to the community that unfolded and developed at the bottom of Hager Hill. With Laurel Presbyterian closed, the closest local congregations for Hager City residents to potentially call home will now be just past the top of the hill at SVEA Lutheran, or else in Bay City and Red Wing. Serving the local community over the years, Laurel Presbyterian in Hager City proper helped provide connections and care to and for local residents, including a children’s Easter Egg Hunt held on church property. Truttmann said her parents joined the congregation in the mid-1940s, while the church decided to close at a meeting held this year toward the end of July. Before holding their last service at the church on November 22, the six remaining members of Laurel Presbyterian had made donations to the food pantry and other community works of service as well, going above and beyond the call.

Also shutting down for reasons other than COVID this year is Ellsworth’s First Presbyterian located kitty corner from Holiday and across Main Street 63 from the Freedom gas station on the west side. First Presbyterian clerk of session Pat Stogdill said the congregation had its initial start with meetings in 1892 at the old courthouse, formerly on the site of the present stone one dating from 1905. With just eight original members to the Ellsworth congregation, an outward-focused missions’ orientation and service to the larger community helped the congregation to grow, to the point that in the 1980s and 1990s, First Presbyterian would have 100 to 150 fifty kids come to Vacation Bible School, or VBS. Among the other contributions to the Ellsworth area was the public library, the idea for one starting with the wife of Reverend Garland, pastor of First Presbyterian from 1923-1927. To raise the initial funding for the start of a local library, women from First Presbyterian served dinners at the Firemen’s Opera House, Stogdill shared. After being initially started by the congregation of First Presbyterian, the local public library was turned over to management by the Village of Ellsworth civil government and went from there. Alongside VBS, First Presbyterian also ran the “HUP-mobile,” which first used an old long car and then a bus to transport area youth to the church. With many additions being made to the original $4,500 church building over the years, the sanctuary and main area of the building were still the original, Stogdill said.

Beginning separately along similar confessional lines, the two congregations in Ellsworth and Hager City joined together as “yoked” congregations in 2006 as their numbers dwindled, surviving longer together than they otherwise could have apart.

“We had the question asked,” how do you see the future of your congregation?” Truttmann shared of when the Hager City congregation began looking into the yoking process in 2004. “And one member said, ‘looking at the finances, I give us three years,’” she closed out. Instead of three years though, the Laurel Presbyterian congregation lasted another 16, alongside First Presbyterian of Ellsworth. Sharing a pastor in Amy Kosari and being affiliated with the Presbytery of the Twin Cities in the PCUSA, or Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, one of multiple different groups of Presbyterians ultimately deriving from Scotland and John Knox. More locally, the congregations of First Presbyterian in Ellsworth and Laurel Presbyterian in Hager City were both outward focused and mission-minded, hosting community events and helped provide a sense of both shared values and common purpose to the communities they inhabited, prior to disbanding recently.

“The church was always mission-minded,” Stogdill said of the historic First Presbyterian church located at 509 West Main Street in Ellsworth. Not just abroad either, but the local area. Among the other events the church held was a “Fair Worker’s Dinner,” in which the men of the congregation would go to the Pierce County Fair and invite fair workers for a good homecooked meal at the church. “It was nice for them to get a real meal instead of fair worker’s food,” Stogdill said, adding that she and her husband had been with the church since 1980.

Now sold to a River Falls developer, the Manse or “pastor’s house” at 519 West Main will be rented out, while the church will reportedly be used for other purposes, including storage. As to Hager City, “we’re in the process of selling,” Truttmann said of the Laurel Presbyterian church building near the Hager City Post Office.

As to beliefs, included alongside the Apostles and Nicene Creeds of the early Church are the Westminster and Scots Confessions of Reformation times. Pertaining to more recent events, the PCUSA Book of Confessions also lists among its documents the Barmen Declaration and Belhar Confession.

The Barmen Declaration is historically important in that it helped provide a theological basis to oppose a nationalized distortion of Christianity called the German Christian Movement in Nazi Germany, while the Belhar Confession dates from the 1980s and was used to oppose the now-defunct system of apartheid in South Africa, which claimed as a partial basis the story of Babel in Genesis 11, this same situation being maintained after Pentecost in the apartheid government’s model. The Belhar Confession as spearheaded by Dutch Reformed minister Allan Boesak and others directly attacked this “original separateness” view with a state-claimed foundation in Scripture. In so doing, pastors like Boesak (who were themselves opposed by other churchmen) helped to provide the basis for what would come to South Africa after the fall of apartheid in 1994, preventing the social chaos that many feared. Some in South Africa still question the reconciled teaching of Belhar, however.

Returning stateside and more locally, others would argue that the Presbyterian (Reformed) model of church government provided the model for the U.S. federal government, in that it is centered in councils of “presbyters” or “elders,” who in turn derive their office by a calling from the people. The situation was such that King George III (who ruled the England during the American Revolution) is reported to have referred to “that Presbyterian revolt” in reference to British army difficulties within the Americas during the war. This, however, is open to interpretation, as history is fed by many streams of both thought and events.

Returning more local still, the stories told by Truttmann and Stogdill of what ultimately brought the two churches to close were similar, but also distinct. Whereas advanced member age and declining numbers helped lead to financial problems that resulted in the closing of First Presbyterian, Hager City’s story was slightly different, with a younger membership in its 60s but few people to hand responsibilities on to and extremely low numbers going forward, which meant that doing work like basic church upkeep became increasingly difficult. Before closing, Truttmann said Laurel Presbyterian has had a long-standing relationship with the Pierce County Food Pantry, but in 2020 the six members of Laurel have donated over $10,000, far beyond what one might expect from such a small congregation. Caring for others was important to the Hager City church, along with their neighbors in Ellsworth.

Now since passed, the closings of Laurel Presbyterian in Hager City and First Presbyterian in Ellsworth as the capital of Pierce County, together leave a void in the social fabric of their local communities and that means fewer ways to be encouraged in dedicating one’s life to serve others, rather than to self alone—among other consequences.

A historic postcard shot of the First Presbyterian Church in Ellsworth. Below, the interior of the Laurel Presbyterian Church in Hager City.