175 years of service: Schaumburg’s St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church celebrates anniversary this month

While the village of Schaumburg’s 70th anniversary is being celebrated this year, today’s residents should know the community was already served by churches more than a century old on the day of incorporation.

St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, which was and is very much in the southwest corner at 1800 S. Rodenburg Road, will mark its own 175th birthday on July 25.

That was the day in 1851 seven German farmers, who already belonged to the 4-year-old St. Peter Lutheran Church in the more developed area now known as Olde Schaumburg Centre at Schaumburg and Roselle roads, decided to form a new congregation closer to their fields.

Charter member Friedrick Hinze and his wife donated three acres of land where three successive church buildings would serve the congregation to the present day.

Pastor Bob Etheridge, who arrived in 2023 as the 24th to lead the church, said the German identity of the founders would predominate much of its history. But the American flag became a regular feature of the sanctuary around World War I when German speakers were looked upon with suspicion.

Despite the concern about such misunderstandings, services in English began to be conducted sparingly only in 1929 because German was so much the basis of congregants’ understanding of the Scriptures.

“Would we lose our faith to the English language?” Etheridge said they wondered.

Nevertheless, English became more and more the dominant language of the congregation until German was completely abandoned in 1964.

Today’s building, completed in 1998, includes the cornerstones of all three churches that occupied the property.

The first, completed in 1863, was destroyed by a fire sparked by a lightning strike in 1910. The second was built quickly afterward but replaced by the current one nearly 30 years ago because its facilities — including restrooms — were inadequate for modern expectations

Furnishings and relics in the present building, including chandeliers and an altar piece from its predecessor, demonstrate that St. John has always had reverence for its history, even as it endeavors to adapt to the needs of today’s congregants, Elder Ed Fondel of Hanover Park said.

He added that this includes the recruitment of Etheridge three years ago from the Northbrook congregation he served before.

“We’re not changing, we’re modernizing our service,” Fondel said.

But today’s congregation — which draws from about a 10-mile radius — still includes three families descended from the original German farmers, Etheridge said.

The building includes a school wing, as operating a school was long a condition of membership in the Missouri Synod the church joined in 1859. It continued to serve as a preschool, specifically, until just a couple years ago.

A nearly at-capacity cemetery lies just across Rodenburg Road, adjacent to where the previous two buildings actually stood. Their former site now serves as an overflow parking area.

While the area continues to become more and more commercially developed — including a truck parking lot for Experior Logistics just behind the church — Etheridge and Fondel expect the current building to still serve the church on its 200th anniversary.