Class Project Allows Student to Help Preserve 150-Year-Old Church

When Sharon Morales, a master’s student in SPP’s Transportation Policy, Operations and Logistics (TPOL) program, received an assignment to write about an aspect of cultural property policy, planning or protection last spring, she affectionately thought about St. John’s Lutheran Church in Nemaha County, Neb. The church her German ancestors helped build along the Oregon Trail in 1866 sat in the middle of corn and wheat pastures in eastern Nebraska, and its congregation was struggling to survive. The congregation was shrinking at a time when the church complex desperately needed support. Gravestones lay broken and fallen over in the church cemetery; and the microfiche that stored the church’s baptismal, wedding and funeral records was beginning to deteriorate.

St. John’s Lutheran Church in Nemaha County is the oldest Nebraska sanctuary in continuous use by descendants of its original congregation.

After some research, Morales learned that federal funds could not save the church, and that no preservation funds were available from the state of Nebraska. Once the congregation died out, this historic church complex would have no protection. Without a Building Preservation and Endowment Fund, the church property would pass out of the control of the local community and revert to the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), which could raze the historic building and sell the property.

That was a thought Morales could not bear. “If you can imagine going out in 1860 right after the Civil War to see just a simple stonework church. These people put their heart and soul into building it,” says Morales, an occupational safety and health engineer for the Virginia Department of Transportation. “It’s an overwhelming feeling to see that much history.

”The church is the oldest Nebraska sanctuary in continuous use by descendants of its original congregation, according to Morales. The entire church complex (including an 1866 limestone church, 1903 Gothic church structures and cemetery dating from 1857) was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

In her paper, Morales outlined several steps the congregation could take to maintain and preserve this historic property for the community. The recommendations included becoming accessible on the Internet, establishing a preservation foundation, developing a preservation plan and asserting the church’s historic position. She also helped the church to create a searchable database of its records, and passed her research on to the congregation council. She could only hope that her hard work would inspire church members to take some vital steps to protect the property.

Just a few months after completing her paper, Morales visited the church for her family’s 150-year reunion. To her delight, the congregation had taken some of her recommendations seriously. “The congregation has finally established a Building Preservation and Endowment Fund. Along with their existing Cemetery Preservation Fund, this will ensure the entire property’s preservation with local community control,” she says. In addition, the church was looking into options for funding building repairs and maintenance.

After hearing this news, Morales gained a greater appreciation for her coursework at Mason. These feelings only deepened when one prominent church member approached Morales to request the research documents that supported her project. “He appreciated my class work as real and useful for the church,” she says.