One of Edmonton’s oldest churches closed its doors for the last time Sunday.
The Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church on 99 Avenue and 107 Street held its final service on December 28.
Dr. Dianne Kieren, who has been playing the organ for Augustana since 1967, said it was a perfect way to end.
“To me it was just the tone that it should have been. To celebrate the life of this congregation, which has been rich and full, exciting people. And it also is a celebration of the longtime of planning that this congregation has led this whole change,” she told CTV News.
She explained that the congregation had been planning the closing for about 10 years.
“We looked at mergers. We looked at selling one time. We looked at all kinds of different alternatives and finally we decided that selling the property and supporting other ministries would be a wonderful thing for this congregation.”
Kieren said the church had been a home for her and her husband and their family since they moved to Edmonton.
“We had two women who were not married who adopted us. We went there for holidays. The children sat in church with them while my husband sat in the choir and I played the organ. We could depend on them being a part of our family and that was important.”
However, she said it has been a change in demographics that has hurt Augustana.
“We used to have a Sunday school of 100 kids, my husband taught two the last couple of years. Now this year we had no children in the church in Sunday school,” Kieren explained.
“Now we have more people over 80 than under 30 in the congregation.”
Despite being welcoming to those from all walks of life, the church’s website confirmed membership dropped from 55 in 2007 to 42 in 2013. The average worship attendance for 2013 was at 23, down from 36 in 2007.
“Being a downtown church is not the place to grow numbers,” current pastor Kathleen Schmitke said.
“At the end it wasn’t even so much that there weren’t new people coming, because there were, but it was the people who actually needed to do the jobs and take on the responsibilities were a smaller group that were really stretched.”
Schmitke said the building, which was purchased by a developer, would be torn down.
“My understanding is that it will be mostly residential but it will also have something that indicates what happened here for 80-some years,” she said.
She explained the developers were former parishioners who have requested the church’s cornerstone to put up with a plaque at the site.
Proceeds of the sale will go to charity initiatives that mesh with the church’s history.
The congregation marked its 85th anniversary in October.
With files from Nicole Weisberg
