Church: Dorchester, Wis., Salem Evangelical Church 50th Ann.

Contact: janet@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Seager, Thiel, Schmidt, Marks, Bursack, Zellner, Zimmerman, Schuelke, Kolander, Kalwitz

Source: Dorchester, Wis. Public Library

50^th Anniversary of Dorchester Salem Evangelical Church

The Salem Evangelical Church accommodated three overflow crowds Sunday when the final services in honor of the Golden Jubilee were held with Bishop Lawrence H. Seager of Le Mars, Iowa officiating at the morning and evening services, and the afternoon service featuring the jubilee service with Rev. Thiel and G. F. Schmidt, charter member, speaking.

The Sunday meetings culminated a week of services under the charge of various pastors who had served the Dorchester congregation.  The Reverends E.W. and John Marks and L.G. Bursack were the former pastors present for the week evening services.

During the Sunday afternoon service Brother G.F. Schmidt told an interesting history of the Little White Church as an eye witness to the many changes and developments.  Following his talk the members of the congregation presented a beautiful basket of flowers to him in commemoration of his half century of service in the church.

The Rev. L. H. Thiel, pastor of the congregation, in his jubilee address Sunday afternoon said:

“Two score and ten years ago, our father brought forth to this community a new church, conceived in Christ and dedicated to the proposition that all men shall be saved.  Now, we are engaged in a great spiritual war against sin, testing whether that church or any other church so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a great battlefield of that war.  We have come to honor and commemorate those who gave their lives that this church might be brought into an active existence and that the power of God through the love of Jesus Christ, our Lord, should convict every heart of sin and bring it to repentance.

“It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, but in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.  The brave men living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it above our power to add or detract.  The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget wheat they did here.  It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored souls we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their every full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these honored souls shall not have labored in vain, that this church in Christ shall have a new birth of spirit of God and that this church of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Members of the Marshfield, Chili and Butternut congregations and Rev. E. Zellner of Marshfield, and Rev. G. Zimmerman of Chili, assisted with the musical details of the program.  Other pastors attending were Rev. Schuelke of Tomah, Rev. C. Kolander of Eau Claire and Rev. J.R. Kalwitz of Medford.