The high pulpit at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Serbin is perfectly positioned for the delivery of a sermon. However, the height does come with some disadvantages.
Moonyean Recks recently shared in a comment on a previous post featuring St. Paul Serbin that in 1970 her husband, the Rev. Ewald Recks, was delivering a sermon one evening during a Lenten service when a sudden storm knocked out the power. So there Pastor Recks was, up in the pulpit in the pitch black, with the wind howling mightily outside.
It gets pretty dark inside that church when the lights aren’t on, and I don’t think I’d want to try to navigate those stairs without at least some amount of light.
Fortunately, some men from the congregation were able to find flashlights (I guess today folks would have just been able to use their mobile phones as flashlights) and he was able to get down to the ground floor. He then gave the benediction and folks left for home from the truncated service.
This all happened on March 6, 1970. Interestingly enough, almost thirteen years earlier, on March 20, 1957, the Rev. A.E. Gruetzner was preparing for a Lenten service at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Lincoln when a severe storm heavily damaged the building (that building was demolished and replaced in 1958 by the current one, which was designed by Eugene Wukasch).
So it seems that folks in Lee County should beware of Wednesday night storms during Lent!