Our Saviour Episcopal Church in Lugerville is closing

LUGERVILLE — The lone church in Lugerville is closing, citing declining membership as the cause.

Our Savior Episcopal Church was a repurposed school building. The conversion was in the 1940s. It was never a large congregation, but it was central to the families who for nearly 80 years, said Kenneth Johnson, senior warden of the church vestry. The decision to close comes as average attendance is now down to three or four regulars.

“And so keeping up the building and that kind of stuff is getting hard for those people and a need to close has come upon us,” he said.

Bishop Matthew Gunter of the Episcopal Diocese of Wisconsin will lead the closing service on Sept. 10. The bishop will be assisted by the Rev. William Radant, a retired Episcopal priest in Manitowish Waters who served Our Saviour as a supply priest until late 2023.

The church closing service is a deconsecration process required by the Episcopal church to secularize the structure, Johnson said. The service removes sacramental items and the blessing for religious use by a congregation.

The closing is an opportunity for people who have had contact with the church in the past and may want to revisit the building and the members to reconnect, he said. There may be people who are now senior citizens who attended the church as children. There may be people who weren’t members but took part in the summer vacation bible school or attended the shared church and community events.

“We do not know who all of those people may be,” Johnson said.

The building is owned by the diocese and will be put up for sale, Johnson said. The members and the diocese would like to see another church community use the building rather than have it be repurposed.

“That may be the best usage of the building, but it is not necessary,” he said. “The building is in fairly good condition. It’s gone through some upkeep and some remodeling over the years.”

There were three Episcopal dioceses in Wisconsin until 2023 when they combined into one, Johnson said. Lugerville, formerly of the Eau Claire diocese and the realignment was not a factor in Our Saviour’s closing. It was a topic under consideration by church members for a long time.

“It was our decision because we no longer had the membership to maintain the facility,” Johnson said.

The decision to close was a practical one and is similar to planning a funeral for a faith community as opposed to an individual, he said. But it still needs to be done and the process is helpful to make the experience as meaningful as it is painful.

“Definitely, there’s still a sense of loss,” Johnson said. “It’s kind of like life. You get to a point in life where you know you don’t have a whole lot of time left. There’s going to be a final time and you try to make the best of that. And that’s kind of what happened here. We have come to the point where it’s the death of this congregation, this community. It’s a hard decision but it’s a decision that had to be made.”

The practical side helps to overcome strong feelings, he said. There is a time to just “buckle down and do it.”

UNIQUE ORIGINS

The Anglican Church arose out of the Church of England and the American church underwent changes as a result of the Revolutionary War, Johnson said. The Lugerville Episcopalians weren’t tied together by a shared story other than the faith, so the movement to start a community was different than the area Lutherans and Catholics.

A Phillips Bee story on the 50th anniversary of the church in 1989 noted the origins of Our Saviour began with an Episcopal minister who traveled to Lugerville to hold services at homes of the faithful in the 1930s. The congregation continued to solidify and Rev. Thomas Moehle in Medford agreed to make Lugerville a mission. He held Saturday evening services in the Lugerville School, the community center near Popple Hill Road and County Road F, and in the Popple School.

Through the 1940s, Thora Rishel, who moved from Chicago to become the Lugerville postmaster, was also a deacon in the Episcopal church and further established the congregation with “Church School” religious education and started the Women’s Guild, a clothing donation and distribution group along with a sewing group.

“She came to this area as the postmaster and saw a need for a church in the area,” he said of Rishel.

In 1949 the congregation acquired the former South Fork School and moved it to Lugerville. The assertiveness of Thora Rishel and the Grant family were instrumental, Johnson said.

The Bee story says Bishop William Horstick bought the church at auction and the building was transformed into a church. The main classroom became the church and altar, Johnson said. The children’s cloak room and entryway became the fellowship room and kitchen. The church was placed on a foundation with a full basement. A bell tower was added in 1983 when a former schoolhouse bell became available.

Rev. Moehle built the first altar himself out of plywood and it remained in use until 1956. That was when the Episcopal Church donated an old altar and rails from the Bundy Hall camp retreat, according to the Phillips Bee article.

The early church had wood stoves and later used space heaters which sometimes led to closing the church in winter and holding services elsewhere. Central heating was added in the early 2000s.

The height of the church’s membership came in the early 1970s, Johnson said. There were approximately 25 regulars at that time. They hosted a weekly meal that expanded into a weekly brat fry fundraiser in Phillips. The outreach was in part to ensure new and visiting Episcopalians were aware of the rural church.

There were around 12 regular members when Johnson, the son of an Episcopal priest, retired from law enforcement in Fort Atkinson and moved to Lugerville in 2003. The membership lacked younger families and saw a gradual decline over the last 20 years.

The summer vacationers attended regularly and were strong supporters financially, Johnson said. The cabin residents, mostly from southern Wisconsin and Illinois were counted as members because they attended regularly.

One of those visiting couples wanted to be married at Our Saviour and helped finance a year’s worth of church expenditures, he said. This helped maintain the building as membership declined.

Another included a wife who was an Episcopal and her husband who was not but chose to attend services with her during their summer visits. The husband grew faithful and was baptized in the church before his death.

Around 2017 even the visiting faithful were aging to the point where the visits slowed or stopped, he said. The low membership led members to hold winter services in the chapel of St Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Park Falls and would have likely not held services again this winter in Lugerville.

Our Saviour has undergone a few changes in direction since it was established and has now come to the point where the direction points to one option. St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church of Park Falls closed around 2010, which was a financial decision of the members.

Two of St. Margaret’s members started to go to Lugerville while other members switched to other denominations in Park Falls. The result may be that some Our Saviour members drive to Minocqua or further for Episcopal services or choose another church, Johnson said.