St. John's Lutheran Church

Religious InstitutionsIllinois, United States11-50 Employees

An ELCA Lutheran Church located in Des Moines, Iowa.  We are "In the City for Good!"

St. John's was organized as the First English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Des Moines, with Reverend A.M. Geiger as its first pastor. As its name implies, it was organized as an English-speaking congregation. Other congregations of that period spoke other languages to comply with the ethnic groups which they were serving. The name of the church was not changed to St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Des Moines until August 22, 1880. St. John's, which currently has 2,600+ baptized members, started on November 26, 1865 with 24 charter members. The first building, erected in 1868, was located at Seventh and Grand Avenue where the Ruan Building is now.

In 1892, St. John's moved to its present location. The congregation then had grown to 150 members and the village of Des Moines had grown to a city of 50,000 inhabitants. The original structure, which was red brick, was torn down in 1935 and the current stone building was built on the same site. This structure has been added to twice, in 1951 and again in 1965, to accommodate the increase in membership.

Today St. John's is one of the larger congregations in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. St. John's called Pastor Rachel Thorson Mithelman to serve as Senior Pastor in 2005.  Our Associate Pastor Robert Speirs was called to St. John’s fall of 2007.

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