St Paul Lutheran Church to host German Christmas Service

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Mount Prospect, will be hosting a German language Christmas service at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 10. The church is at 100 S. School St., on the corner of Busse Avenue and School Street. This is the congregation's 11th annual German Christmas Service, and it draws worshippers from the across the Chicago Northwest suburbs.

While the traditional Lutheran service will be conducted in German, an English translation of the sermon will be available. The German Christmas service is one of the few of its kind still being held in the Northwest suburbs. Musical selections will be sung by the Germa-American singers of Chicago Choir.

St. Paul Lutheran church was founded in 1912 by farmers and businessmen residing in the area that was soon to become the village of Mount Prospect. The first church was built in 1913, a couple blocks east of downtown Mount Prospect on farmland donated by George Busse. Many of the village's founding families were early members of the congregation.

St. Paul was originally a satellite church of St. John Lutheran Church which is on the south side of Mount Prospect. St. John was established in 1848. St. Paul held services in German until the mid-1930s and the congregation's Lutheran School taught the German language until the late 1970s. In 2011, the church reintroduced a German Christmas service as a kickoff to the congregation's 100-year anniversary. The service was so well received by the congregation's members and the broader community that it was decided to turn it into an annual tradition.

Senior Pastor Bo Graham noted that the service "is not just for German speakers but for all who would like to experience Christmas worship in the tradition of our areas' earliest residents."