Although Norwegian immigrants had been in Waco since the Civil War, no one had tried to organize a church for these Lutherans until 1884.

On April 18, 1884, a group of some three dozen young men and women met in a borrowed room at the Methodist church at the corner of Sixth Street and Franklin Avenue to discuss forming a congregation.

According to a later historian of First Lutheran Church of Waco, the impetus behind the meeting was that several of the young women, employed as household domestics, were being induced by their employers to join their bosses’ churches.

Their spiritual descendents, the members of First Lutheran Church of Waco, will mark their 125th anniversary Sunday. The celebration takes place on the grounds of that first church — their present home — at 10th Street and Jefferson Avenue.

The nascent church named itself the “Skandnaviske Evangeliske Lutherske Ebenezer Menighed” (Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Ebenezer Congregation).

It was led by two ministers who took turns: the Rev. J.A. Stamelin, pastor of Swedish Lutheran Church of Round Rock, who commuted by train; and the Rev. J.K. Rystad, pastor of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church of Norse, who made his calls in Waco by horse and buggy.

Ebenezer Church, as it was known, built a wooden frame sanctuary at the corner of 10th Street and Jefferson Avenue, which was considered the outskirts of town in those days. It was dedicated in October 1884, and the first wedding was conducted there just before Christmas.

In 1886, the first resident pastor was called. A newly ordained minister, the Rev. Isaac B. Torrison (1859-1929) served the Waco faithful from 1886 until 1889. He later pastored in Wisconsin and Iowa.

The congregation’s third pastor, the Rev. Rasmus J. Meland (1869-1961), came from his native Minnesota to Waco in 1896, shortly after graduating seminary and being ordained to the ministry. Meland was installed on Christmas Day, 1896.

Before he left in September 1900 to be a missionary to rural northern Minnesota, he documented several aspects of church life with his camera.

The old frame church building built in 1884 was sold for $300 in 1917 to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church’s congregation and moved to 17th Street and Clay Avenue.

As the new sanctuary was being constructed on the original property at 10th and Jefferson, the congregation also voted to change its name from Ebenezer Skandnaviske Menighed to First Lutheran Church of Waco. It also finished phasing out the Norwegian language services.

Attendance at the church soared during World War I because of the presence of Camp MacArthur training base. Many of those stationed there were members of the Wisconsin National Guard, most of them Lutherans. And First Lutheran’s pastor, the Rev. M.B. Quill, was named a camp pastor as well.

Sources: Nordfjordlaget In America (Web site for a Norwegian-American cultural preservation society); First Lutheran Church of Waco archives, RootsWeb.com.