Go & Tell the Story

  Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church, the oldest, continuous Lutheran church west of the Missouri River, is the birthplace of Lutheranism in Nebraska and the Nebraska Synod (1871), and has been worshiping, growing, and serving in downtown Omaha for over 160 years. Kountze Memorial (originally known as Emanuel’s Evangelical Lutheran Church) was founded in 1858, by Rev. Henry W. Kuhns, as a mission church of the Allegheny Synod of Pennsylvania. At the time, there were no other Lutheran congregations in the area. In 1862, after renting meeting facilities for a time, the congregation built a modest church at 13th and Douglas, the current site of the Holland Performing Arts Center. The church bell, cast in 1867, is the oldest church bell in Nebraska and was recently refurbished and remains in use in the current church building at 26th and Farnam.  A second church building was built in 1885 at 16th and Harney at a cost of $50,000 with a gift from charter member Augustus Kountze. This ...

  First Lutheran Church of Lincoln began its life in 1870 as Swedish settlers founded a church in the newly established capital of Nebraska. Though we often assume early founders were heroic pastors, First was mostly a lay movement in its first 30 years, served by a shifting array of preachers who travelled among congregations struggling to establish themselves on the prairie. First Lutheran Swedish Church consisted mostly of new immigrants, many of them young Swedish women brought over as domestics to serve in the houses of the growing town. This early open outreach and service remained a mark of First's ministry, situated as it was in a small structure at 13th and K Street near the heart of the growing town. However, the development of First Lutheran didn't really accelerate until the turn to a new century, when a larger building with a pipe organ was established; the focus on the pipe organ in the expense of building a new structure reveals another long term orientation of t...

 By Bishop Brian Maas September marks the 150th anniversary of the formal founding of an entity known as the Nebraska Synod. The committee working to help commemorate that milestone has chosen as its theme, “Built on a Rock,” having in mind especially Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone upon whom, with the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ’s church is built.  Had the Nebraska Synod been built on anything but this solid rock, this chief cornerstone, I’m convinced it wouldn’t still be around. Only Jesus Christ, through the constant presence of his Spirit, speaking through the Word, becoming flesh again both through the sacrament and through the living members of his body the church, could support and sustain this powerful, dynamic, faithful and committed entity. Certainly those descriptors didn’t all fit the fledgling body at its outset. The first gathering of the Nebraska Synod—its first assembly, if you will—was comprised of a small handful of people, from tin...