St. Andrew Lutheran Church

1901 62nd Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33712

Senior Pastor Mark E. Kreemer

E-mail: standrewluth@verizon.net

Phone: (727) 864-3103

Fax: (727) 906-4833

© 2011 St. Andrew Lutheran Church

HISTORY / St. Andrew Lutheran Church / ELCA

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.—Galatians 6:9

St. Andrew Lutheran Church

Rev. Francis I. Fesperman, a mission developer, was sent by the Board of American Missions to St. Petersburg on September 1, 1951, to develop the Southside Lutheran Mission, later to become St. Andrew Lutheran Church. The mission’s first service was conducted by Rev. Fesperman for 214 attendees at 3 p.m. on October 14, 1951, in the Church of Spiritual Philosophy at 1715 18th Avenue South, then known as Tangerine Avenue.

On May 23, 1952, the congregation held a fellowship dinner in Lakeview Presbyterian Church and set November 30, 1952, as the day of organization. Since the church calendar designates that day as St. Andrew Day, by unanimous vote the mission would become St. Andrew Lutheran Church.

The organizational service at 3 p.m. on November 30, 1952, was attended by 250. The congregation had 98 charter members, 48 of whom had been released from Trinity Lutheran Church in a special service because the new church was closer to their homes in the Pinellas Point neighborhood. Because of the infusion of those members, Trinity is regarded as the mother church of St. Andrew.

Rev. Fesperman was installed as the first pastor on February 1, 1953.

St. Andrew’s was received as a member of the Florida Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America at its convention in Lakeland on May 12, 1953.

The parsonage at 101 Kingston Street South was dedicated on December 5, 1954, in a service conducted from the doorway of the residence. 

A groundbreaking service marking the beginning of construction of the first unit of a church building was held at 12:15 p.m. on December 18, 1955, on a lot at 2830 22nd Avenue South, then known as Lakeview Avenue. On May 6, 1956, the first services were held in the new building.

Within a decade, St. Andrew's membership began to experience a steady decline, and the congregation accepted on October 23, 1966, an offer from the Presbytery of West Florida to purchase the church building, which became Trinity Presbyterian Church.

The St. Andrew family began worshipping on January 29, 1967, at the first Bay Point Elementary School, where Bay Point Middle School now stands at the intersection of 22nd Street South and 62nd Avenue South, while a new church was being built on 5 acres of land at 1901 62nd Avenue South. The first services in the new building were held on January 19, 1969, and a service of dedication was held on February 2, 1969.

The preschool and child care center was established in 1970 and later was named in honor of Marion McMannis, who was the force behind its creation.

In 1979 the church building was renovated and enlarged, and in 1997 a new education wing was finished and dedicated in honor of Rev. Klaus O.R. Koch, who had the longest service as pastor of St. Andrew, from 1971 to 1997.

Rev. Mark E. Kreemer has been our pastor since 2005. He accepted our call from Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, where he served as pastor from 2000 to 2005.

These pictures show the current church on Dedication Day, February 2, 1969.

ELCA

As Lutherans migrated to the New World, they continued to speak and worship in their native languages and use resources from their countries of origin. As the number of these congregations grew, scattered groups would form a “synod,” or church body.

By the late 1800s the approximately 20 Lutheran church bodies that would eventually merge to become the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America had been established. Between 1840 and 1875, 58 Lutheran synods were formed in the United States.

The first significant merger of church bodies occurred in 1917, when three ethnic Norwegian synods joined to form the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (NLCA), and in 1918, when three ethnic German synods joined to form the United Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). During World War I, these two large synods and other smaller ones formed the National Lutheran Commission in 1917 out of concern for the spiritual well-being of U.S. service personnel being sent into combat.

In a short time, 60,000 laymen were involved in the relief effort and then formed their own organization, the Lutheran Brotherhood, which still supported the work of the commission by building facilities and supplying equipment. After the war the Lutheran Brotherhood continued to develop lay leadership and to foster intersynodical relationships.

Because of a growing need to provide missionaries to America’s expanding industrial centers and to render aid to Lutherans in Europe, the National Lutheran Council (NLC) was formed by September 1918.

In 1930 three churches with German origins merged to form the American Lutheran Church, which had become one of the eight member churches in the NLC, along with the ULCA. In the late 1940s and '50s the ULCA proposed a merger of all the member churches of the NLC, and, although the proposal failed, in 1952 the American Lutheran Conference Joint Union Committee presented the document “The United Testimony” to its member churches, agreeing that they were in "essential agreement" with the positions of the ULCA and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

In 1960 the American Lutheran Church (German), United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian) merged to form the American Lutheran Church (ALC). The Lutheran Free Church (Norwegian), which had dropped out of merger negotiations, came into the ALC in 1963.

In 1962 the ULCA (German, Slovak, and Icelandic) joined with the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (Swedish), Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, and American Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) to form the Lutheran Church in America (LCA).

Meanwhile, the Lutheran World Federation’s (LWF) 1957 resolve to study contemporary Roman Catholicism with the possibility of entering into “interconfessional conversations” and the reforms proposed by the Second Vatican Council, led to a series of theological dialogues. Lutherans also accepted the invitation of Reformed churches (Presbyterian) in America to begin discussions of possible pulpit and altar fellowship. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), not a member church of the NLC or the LWF, participated in these ecumenical dialogues at the national level and joined the NLC churches in 1967 to form the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. (LCUSA).

The LCMS, rooted in confessional conservatism and relatively unchanged since its organization in 1846-47 as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, held to a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible. However, some LCMS seminary professors began to adopt historical critical methods in their classrooms. A new seminary president with experience in inter-Lutheran and ecumenical affairs was challenged by the new conservative synodical president. A 3-year investigation ensued, and the 1973 convention voted to censure the faculty. In 1974 the seminary president was suspended, and many seminarians and faculty left the seminary to form “Seminex,” a seminary-in-exile. Meanwhile, a moderate movement in LCMS called Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM) was formed.

The issue of whether or not to ordain graduates of Seminex led to the removal of four district presidents at the 1975 convention, and by 1976 the moderates had gathered forces to form the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). Approximately 300 congregations and 110,000 people moved into the AELC from LCMS with a stated goal from the beginning of promoting unity with the ALC and LCA.

In 1977 the LCMS decision to place fellowship with ALC “in protest” along with the AELC’s “Call to Lutheran Union” nudged the three church bodies -- ALC, LCA, and AELC -- toward merger. The 1978 ALC and LCA conventions adopted resolutions aimed at the creation of a single church body. The AELC joined them, and the ALC-LCA Committee on Church Cooperation became the Committee on Lutheran Unity (CLU) in January 1979.

The 1980 conventions of all three church bodies adopted a 2-year study process. On September 8, 1982, the three church bodies voted to proceed on the path toward a new Lutheran church. The CLU proposals included the structure and operating procedures for a new group, the Commission for a New Lutheran Church (CNLC), and a timetable for the churches.

By August 1986 the CNLC had completed its work, and again the three church bodies met in simultaneous conventions and voted to accept the constitution and bylaws of the new church as well as the proposed agreement and plan of merger, thus creating the fourth largest Protestant body in the United States.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was born at its constituting convention in Columbus, Ohio, April 30-May 3, 1987. At 12:01 a.m., Central Standard Time, January 1, 1988, the ELCA became the legal successor to its predecessors, a mosaic reflecting not only the ethnic heritages of traditional Lutherans through its original churches but also the full spectrum of American and Caribbean cultures and proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world.

Summarized from www.elca.org