St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church (1853)

Lutheran congregation (ELCA) of the west end · organized 1852–53 · 729 West Washington Boulevard · active, November 2026

Founding: St. John's is the congregation that left. St. Paul's own historian, Martin H. Bertram, writing the mother church's 125-year history in 1962, records it without varnish: "The withdrawal of members in 1852 to organize local St. John's congregation was, to be sure, fraught with some bitterness and provoked some sharp debate." The genealogical society's list dates the congregation from 1853. Where St. Paul's went with the Missouri Synod's confessional line, St. John's went the other road, through the General Synod's successors to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Building line and present state: The congregation worships at 729 West Washington Boulevard, where the library's congregational directory places it and the ELCA's Indiana-Kentucky Synod directory of June 2024 carries it, the Rev. Paul Offhaus pastor. Its parish registers, 1868 to 1973, are held at the Allen County Public Library. The present church's building dates are not carried in the sources this gazetteer could reach.

Sources:

1. Bertram, A Brief History of St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1837–1962 (the 1852 withdrawal).
2. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, church list: "St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wayne Township, 1853, active."
3. Allen County Public Library, Congregational Records directory (729 W. Washington St., ELCA; registers 1868–1973).
4. Indiana-Kentucky Synod, ELCA, congregation directory, June 2024 (present pastor).