St. Paul's dedicates

new parish center

By RACHEL WEDDIG

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church dedicated its new parish center Sunday with a special service and an open house.

The church was filled as the congregation and visitors gathered to tour the parish center. Construction on the facility began in July 2000.

The $2.7 million parish center is a 20,000 square-foot addition to the church's worship facility. Its focal point is the Fellowship Hall.

The fellowship hall on the upper level will seat more than 300 guests at tables. For smaller gatherings, the hall can be divided with acoustical panels. A large kitchen is next door. Another highlight is the fireside room with its comfortable sofas and chairs.

"This is a major change for St. Paul's. The church had been very much handicapped by facilities that wouldn't allow us to do the things we wanted to do," said Parish Center Building Committee member Robert Hinnenthal. "Before, when we would hold funerals or weddings at the church we could only offer them meals in the basement that wasn't handicap accessible and now we have an elevator."

In the spring of 1998, a task force that had been called to analyze the organization and needs of the congregation recommended that some type of new facility was needed for the work and mission of the congregation. From this task force, a facility planning building committee was formed and planning started for the building of the new parish center.

"We're very pleased with the architects and general contractors -- I think we got a building that has some very nice design elements," said Church Administrator Ron Schmidt. "We're very pleased to be able to move into a new building. We've never had a facility like this before."

Schmidt was very happy with the turnout for the dedication service and was grateful to Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod President Karl Gurgel for his guest sermon.

"There are a lot of very proud people around. I'm just very thankful to God," Schmidt said. "For people to participate in a worship for a full church is very exciting and I was extremely pleased to have Rev. Gurgel here."

During the dedication service, Gurgel preached about how people should "build each other up" and help each other feel good about themselves.

"We need to keep building each other up through faith," Gurgel said. "Watching the horrific events that took place on Sept. 11 never made me feel so helpless as I watched the events from Singapore. I kept in touch with people through e-mail, but I never felt so helpless. Watching the pictures from the scenes over and over again -- it wasn't like a video game where you could turn it off."

Gurgel encouraged the congregation to take initiative to help those who struggle to feel good about themselves.

"We need to continue to build each other up and encourage one another and put our arms around each other," Gurgel said. "There's no one superior to each other on this earth -- we all are equals."

The parish center has been open for two months and Schmidt said people are taking advantage of the increased space.

"Some nights we have meetings in seven or eight rooms in the parish center," Schmidt said. "We had a lot of community interest, and we're glad to offer an open house and are pleased to have visitors inside the building. We also will offer non-profit organizations groups to use the center's meeting rooms."

Members of the congregation were also excited about the new addition.

"I'm surprised it came so fast in a certain sense -- once we started moving on it, it came very fast," said church member John Nelson. "We'd like to use the center as an outreach tool for us as we've had a lot of interest from the community. The building of the center served as a big focus thing for our congregation."

The center also brings church activities under on facility.

"There was a lot of people involved to get to this day," Nelson said. "Before we had so many activities spread out in different buildings, and now we'll be able to hold them all at the church."