Holy Trinity celebrates 80 years of faith

EPHRATA — Even in challenging times, there's a lot going on at Holy Trinity Church in Ephrata.

“It’s a far cry from the heyday in the history of this congregation where they had hundreds of people worshiping on a Sunday,” said Council President Gary Bracht. “But within this small body, we're doing a lot more outreach and impacting more people in the community. We're looking at it as, where do we see God calling us? And that's the direction that we've taken.”

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church will celebrate 80 years of worship and community involvement at its service Sunday. The congregation may be small, Bracht said, but its outreach into the community far exceeds its numbers. The church has operated Hosanna Preschool since 1977, said longtime member Doris Sieverkropp, who joined Holy Trinity with her husband Raymond in 1955.

“In the ’70s there were a lot of young families with children,” she said. “So two or three of the ladies said,  ‘Maybe we should start thinking about putting something together where we could gather the little 3- and 4-year-olds (and teach them),’ Then the pastor's wife got involved, and then others. We've had a lot of teachers at Hosanna through the years.”

At its inception, Hosanna Preschool mostly taught the children of church members, Doris Sieverkropp said, but today there are 26 children, only one of whom comes from a Holy Trinity family.

For older children, Holy Trinity leads a program called OMNY, which stands for Outreach Ministries for Neighborhood Youth. OMNY is for children in third through sixth grades who may have social or behavioral challenges, Bracht said. OMNY meets three days a week for about four hours a day, he said.

“They’re served a breakfast and a lunch meal, family style, and they're coached by (school counselors) with two adult directors,” Bracht said. “They focus on socializing skills: common courtesy, respect. Each week they have a character trait that they emphasize.”

Besides the learning, bike riding is a major part of OMNY, Bracht said. Every day the kids ride somewhere as a group for an activity.

 “The first day there were two policemen eating breakfast with them,” said Interim Pastor Laura Olson.

“They gave (the kids) a safety orientation on bicycle safety and how to wear a helmet properly,” Bracht said. “And then they went out for a bike ride.”

Some of the kids didn’t have a bike available to them, Bracht said, and so church members posted a request on social media for help supplying bikes.

“Within 10 minutes, Granco Federal Credit Union called me and said, ‘We’re going to Walmart right now to buy the bikes. What kind of bikes do you need?’” Bracht said. “(OMNY) is an outreach into the community, but the community is reaching into the program also.”

Holy Trinity was also instrumental in getting Basin Retirement Home, a few blocks away on C Street, built in the late 1970s, Doris Sieverkropp said. A church member wanted a place for his aging mother, she said, and so he began the process of threading the government maze to establish a home for lower-income seniors.

“When you start applying to the government for help, it's difficult, and it took several years and a lot of work on his part to get it going,” she said. “The first thing he did was ask if we as a congregation would be willing to be the sponsor because that would help get things moving. In order to be a member, we each paid a dollar.”

The three-story, 17,000-square-foot building was built in 1979, according to county records.

“He was fortunate enough that his mother lived there for several years before she passed away,” Doris Sieverkropp said. “It’s been a very good thing for the community … We go down there two or three times a year for activities and meals.”

The OMNY students also spend some time with the residents at Basin Retirement Home, Bracht said, and recently went there for an intergenerational ice cream social.

A growing faith

The congregation held its first service on June 30, 1946, according to a history of the church. Forty-eight members attended the service, with a Sunday School class of eight. The church was officially incorporated on July 28, 1946.

“Like any church, they had to start somewhere,” Doris Sieverkropp said. “So they met in the (Ephrata Rec Center) building downtown, and they brought in a young pastor right out of seminary to start working and organizing.”

The fledgling congregation, under the leadership of newly-ordained Pastor Raymond Pflueger, had $20,000 available to build a new building and parsonage. That project was completed in 1947, and the church still meets in the same building on Southwest C Street.

During Pastor Pflueger’s time, the Sieverkropps were married at Holy Trinity. Raymond was a lifelong Lutheran from a devout family; Doris was not, she said.

“My whole (childhood), I probably went to church two or three times,” she said. “(My sister and I) went one Sunday, and we didn’t like it, and we were told we had to go back again. The second Sunday we went back and we both said, ‘We’re not coming back here again.’ As I became a teenager, when the church bell rang, I knew it was time to get out of bed, because I’d stayed out late the night before.”

That changed when she met Raymond, she said. She attended Easter Service Holy Trinity with him for the first time, and they were married in June. In December of that year, she was baptized and confirmed into the Lutheran faith. The Sieverkropps raised their three children in that church as well, she said.

“In the late ’50s they started talking about doing something because the church was growing,” Doris Sieverkropp said. “We had more kids for Sunday school than they had space for.”

Holy Trinity’s congregation expanded the church building in the early 1960s to the size it is today, she said, adding a wing for Sunday school classes and a fellowship hall. 

Ebbs and flows

The church was a hive of activity in the 1960s and ’70s, and even into the ’80s, Doris Sieverkropp said, but a series of changes of pastor, combined with changes within the denomination itself, narrowed down the membership dramatically. Families with children began either to attend church somewhere else or stopped going altogether, Doris Sieverkropp said.

“All the youth things pretty much came to a standstill, because we had fewer young people to start with, and we didn’t have anyone who wanted to be their leaders anymore,” she said.

Bracht began attending Holy Trinity in the late 1990s, and services at that time drew 50-55 people every Sunday, he said. Today it’s down to about 25.

“There are ebbs and flows,” Bracht said. “We’ll see how things pan out over the next couple of decades.”

The last full-time pastor left Holy Trinity in 2023, according to the church history. Olson is an interim pastor, she said, serving both St. Paul Lutheran Church in Quincy and Holy Trinity. 

“I’ve been here three years, which is a long interim, but there’s a pastor shortage,” Olson said. “I’m not from here, so I’m here three weeks of the month and one week back at home in Bellingham.”

The church is searching for a full-time pastor, Bracht said, but finding one who wants to work in a rural area and serve congregations in two towns has been a challenge, although not an insurmountable one.

“We're optimistic looking into the future and proud of the past,” Bracht said.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church  80th Anniversary Service

9 a.m. Sug. 2

Reception and brunch following service

All are welcome

    The sanctuary and altar of Holy Trinity Church in 1949, two years after the building at 10th Avenue and C Street Southwest, where the church still meets, was completed.
  

    Holy Trinity Lutheran Church was well-attended in the 1950s, as this photo attests, and stayed that way well into the ’80s.
  

    Children learn to make a joyful noise unto the Lord at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. The church has operated the Hosanna Preschool since 1977.
  

    From left: Doris Sieverkropp, Raymond Sieverkropp and Gary Bracht. The Sieverkropps were married at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in 1955 and have been members there ever since. Bracht, a member since 1996, is the church council president.