Nostalgia - The Lutheran Church in Canada, 1970s

St. Peter, Kitchener nave. The baptism font was moved into the middle and the pews cut to create the hippy look of "baptism in the midst".

"Today we had a tour of two of our adaptive reuse projects converting churches in Kitchener. The first is St. Peter’s Lutheran Church which is being renovated into 41 affordable apartments for Indwell in the former chapel / Sunday School wing (the sanctuary part of the church will remain for the church). Construction is underway and some of the units are nearly completed.

The second visit was to Indwell’s St. Mark’s Place, where Graham and Linda from Flourish were sharing about adaptive reuse projects for the KW branch of the Architectural Conservancy Ontario. 43 individuals live in the former church, which was renovated to Passive House standards. Invizij is proud to be the architects for both housing developments."

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Christina and I graduated from Augustana College early, got married and honeymooned in Springfield, Illinois, then moved to Waterloo, Ontario (1970). The seminarians did not like the conservative pastor at St. Peter's Lutheran Church, so I thought, "Sounds good to me." I became the next vicar at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Kirchener, Ontario, a trolley line from Waterloo.

Christina was hired as a librarian at the University of Waterloo and earned an MA in German at UniWat. I took seminary classes and extra courses. I never would have imagined the largest Lutheran church - (new building) just finished - St. Peter's - being turned into 41 low-income apartments, 55 years after it was built on the site of the old church.

The shell of St. Peter's - as they say without blushing - is almost done with 41 units carved out inside. That is similar to several other large Lutheran churches in Kitchener-Waterloo. Waterloo Lutheran Seminary is a tiny part of the very small Martin Luther University Seminary.

WELS dancing ladies