Sesquicentennial History, part 5

The Challenges of the Twentieth Century, 1921-1991

As the congregation celebrated the dedication of its new sanctuary in 1921, it continued to grow. Its membership of over 500 persons by the mid-1920s was ably served by Dr. Henry James Lee from 1925 to 1952. Reminiscences of church members of this period recall Dr. Lee's energy in ministering, single-handedly, to such a large congregation and especially dwell on his ministry to the congregation's youth. He even led Sunday afternoon hikes into the nearby countryside where Wauwatosa boys still maintained a swimming hole on the site of Hoyt Park. Dr. Lee also sponsored Saturday evening dances for the congregation's youth in the Church's new facilities, although such festivities always ended promptly at midnight with the onset of the Sabbath. He added much else to the life of the congregation, too, introducing robes for the pastor and the choir for the first time and instituting in 1935 the now-traditional midnight Christmas Eve service.

Henry James Lee's energies and abilities, and those of the congregation's lay leaders, were severely tested after 1929 by a number of events, the first of a series of challenges that would mark the entire twentieth century. Debt for the construction of the new Church still encumbered the congregation when the New York Stock Exchange crash of 1929 opened a decade of economic depression. Church revenues declined with the national economy, and 1935 closed with some unpaid bills. Church financial problems persisted for some years, but in 1942, in honor of its Centennial, the Church was able to burn its mortgage thanks to the efforts of William J. Grede and his Debt Retirement Committee.

The years of the Depression gave way to the war years of the 1940s. The Second World War affected the Congregation far more deeply than had the First World War. In 1917 and 1918, 53 members of the congregation served in the armed forces but none lost their lives. In 1941-1945, 204 members served, and 12 died in the nation's service.

  (Note: The Nave was changed to introduce the center aisle formation and the communion table and cloth backdrop.)

The war years also produced the beginnings of a major division in American Congregationalism in which First Congregational Church played an important role. The General Council of Congregational Christian Churches, carrying forward the nineteenth-century impulse to realize greater Christian unity, initiated merger talks with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. That project would produce schism.

The two potential partners were quite different, both in size and practice. American Congregationalists in 1945 numbered 1,130,824 persons in 5,836 self-governing congregations that subscribed to no uniform creed. The Evangelical and Reformed Church, itself the result of a merger in 1934 of two Protestant groups of German origin, the Reformed Church and the Evangelical Synod, had a membership of 695,971 persons in 3,806 churches. The Evangelical and Reformed church had a centralized, presbyterical mode of church governance and a creedal tradition. Nonetheless, negotiations between the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church proceeded and a "Basis of Union" document emerged from those discussions in 1942.

Many Congregationalists found the Union a move toward a Church with a central presbytery and a uniform creed that was antithetical to the Congregational Way. Such feelings were especially strong in First Congregational Church. Dr. Lee, the associate minister who joined him in 1951, the Reverend Neil Swanson, and the overwhelming majority of the Church's members opposed the merger and the Church's annual meeting in 1948 rejected the "Basis of Union". Many other Congregationalists were like-minded. They joined members of the Church in the League to Uphold Congregational Principles and the Committee for the Continuation of Congregational Christian Churches. In addition, Cadman Memorial Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York filed suit to challenge the merger efforts of the General Council.

The Cadman case held up merger plans for some years but when the courts finally dismissed the suit, merger plans moved forward toward the creation of the United Church of Christ (UCC). In order to provide an alternative to the UCC, members of the League to Uphold Congregational Principles, the Committee for Continuation of Congregational Christian Churches, and other concerned Congregationalists met in Detroit in 1955 to propose creation of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches (NACCC).

In Wauwatosa in this period there were numerous meetings to determine First Church's stand in all of this. Much of what follows is based on the reminiscences of Neil Swanson. The Church drafted a new constitution in 1953 that reaffirmed Congregational principles. That constitution, as subsequently amended, still guides the Church. Especially noteworthy in this document was the creation of the office of lay Moderator to guide the Church's operation. Then, in May 1956 the congregation voted a resounding affirmation of traditional Congregationalism by again rejecting the "Basis of Union" by a vote of 259 to 9 and by voting 250 to 2 to join the NACCC. In addition, First Congregational Church hosted the October 1956 meeting that created the basic structure of the NACCC, and the Church's Neil Swanson was selected as the NACCC Moderator for 1957. Mr. Swanson served as Moderator in addition to his duties here where he was ably assisted by his Associate Minister, the Reverend John Alexander. Thus, while the majority of Congregational Churches joined in launching the UCC in Cleveland in 1957, First Congregational Church of Wauwatosa was already playing a vital role in the founding of a religious fellowship determined to maintain the Congregational Way. Today, in 1992, the results of the efforts of these Congregationalists stands as the NACCC with nearly 400 affiliated congregations.

The 1950s was a period of great challenge for the Wauwatosa congregation in ways other than the merger issue. The end of World War II brought a post-war "baby boom" which swelled the youthful contingent of the Church's membership throughout the 1950s and early 1960's. The pastoral staff expanded with the addition in 1951 of an associate minister, a position first held by the Reverend Neil Swanson. An 11:00 Sunday School was added in 1952, Family Camp became part of the Church's activities in 1955, and the congregation's growth mandated physical  plant  changes proposed by Dr. Lee in 1952. This major project, completed in 1959 at a cost of $450,000, provided additional office space, the Chapel , a remodeled social hall, and, most importantly, much-needed Sunday School rooms.

Such projects, amidst the merger controversy, were made all the more challenging to the congregation's leaders by several changes in its pastoral leadership. Dr. Lee died tragically in an accident while visiting his native England in 1952. His associate, Neil Swanson, ably assumed the duties of Senior Minister, but his role in the founding of the NACCC led to his departure from our pulpit in 1958 to serve a six-year term as the first full-time Executive Secretary of the NACCC. The final challenge of the 1950s was the search for a new Senior Minister that successfully with the calling of the Reverend Norman S. Ream.

Dr. Ream's ministry in Wauwatosa extended from 1958 until 1983. As one of the longest pastorates in the Church's history, Dr. Ream's ministry proved to be very influential in shaping First Congregational Church. The population served by the Church was beginning to change by the early 1960s. The post-war "Baby Boom" was over and the average age of the American population was beginning a rise that would continue for the rest of the twentieth century. Dr. Ream early recognized this demographic trend and his ministry soon reflected a new emphasis. In 1960 Dr. Ream initiated the idea for a retired men's club to provide intellectual and spiritual stimulus to an ecumenical group of retired men in the community. The result was the Wauwatosa Retired Men's Club that continues to meet in First Congregational Church on the first and third Tuesdays of the month and which has a membership of over 400.

At Dr. Ream's instance the Church undertook an even greater step at the 1966 Annual Meeting when it voted to study the feasibility of founding a home for the aged. That study progressed as the Church observed its one-hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary in 1967, and its positive conclusions led the Church to assume a whole new kind of ministry at its 1967 Annual Meeting.

By 1972 the Church had purchased property for the home, plans for it were approved, and William Grede and Don Haberman led a successful $800,000 pledge drive to begin construction for a facility that received its first residents in January 1974. The Congregational Home has proved to be quite successful: it has grown to fiscal independence of the Church, and its popularity has led to several expansions of the original facility. By 1992 the Congregational Home offered several living options to the aged: one and two-bedroom apartments, single rooms, supervised single room services for those in need of some assistance, and a health center with skilled nursing care.

During the Ream pastorate, the Church extended its ministry in other ways, too. Assistance from First Congregational Church facilitated the gathering of Mayflower Congregational Church in Milwaukee's northern suburbs in 1965. And in 1975 similar assistance made possible the gathering of Lake Country Congregational Church in Hartland. Indeed, the Wauwatosa Church's associate minister, the Reverend Richard Liles, served in 1975-1976 as part-time minister of the Lake Country Church until that congregation could call its own pastor. Fellowship closer to home did not escape the Church's attention, either, in the late 1960s, a period marked by deep divisions in America society as a result of the war in Vietnam. In 1967 the Church instituted the 10:00 A.M. second-Sunday coffee hour to provide fellowship between a membership that found itself somewhat separated into 9:00 and 11:00 congregations.

The physical plant of the Church was also the object of the congregation's attentions during the Ream ministry. In 1967 the Church purchased the property immediately north of its building and there constructed a parking lot the following year. In that year, 1968, the Church's steeple also received extensive repairs and, for the first time, complete lighting, making it a worthy home for the Ruth Godfrey Davidson Bells that were added in 1974. Further improvements came in 1981 on a Church that received landmark status in 1980. At a cost of $350,000 the Church created a north entrance facing an improved parking lot, the Friendship Lounge with a serving kitchen, a completely renovated kitchen on the second floor, and improved nursery facilities.

When Dr. Ream's ministry ended in 1983 after a celebration in honor of his work at First Congregational Church, the congregation called Dr. Philip Muth of the Storrs, Connecticut, Congregational Church as its next pastor. Dr. Muth arrived in June 1983 and for some time served the large congregation without associate ministers because Dr. Ream's retirement had been accompanied by other pastoral departures. But in the course of 1984, the Reverend Markham Dunn and the Reverend Jeff Palmer joined the Church as Associate Ministers. Mr. Palmer was succeeded in his youth and fellowship ministry by the Reverend John Currier in 1986 and by the Reverend Richard Koch, a son of the congregation, in 1990. Mr. Dunn continued until 1991, when his pastoral counseling work was taken up by Dr. John Strassburger.

In the years of the Muth ministry the congregation continued to be an active one. In 1987 the nave of the Church received an extensive renovation,  and the congregation continued to be one whose influence manifested itself far beyond Wauwatosa. Dr. Muth summed up the congregation's spirit in noting that "This congregation can do anything it sets it mind to." Programs in which Church members support the Laubach Literacy Program, and provide meals for the less fortunate through the St. Vincent de Paul meal program on Milwaukee's near South Side continued. In 1988 the congregation entirely financed construction of a $34,000 medical clinic at the NACCC mission in Honduras, and has continued to sustain the operation of that facility with its benevolence. And in 1991-1992 congregation members completely renovated an inner city, Milwaukee home at 2212 North 36th Street with their contributions of labor and funds through the Habitat for Humanity program. Sadness marked the life of the Church, too, when one of its sons, Scott Schroeder, gave his life in the American and Allied action against Iraq in January 1991.

Celebration of the Church's Sesquicentennial in 1991-92 also prompted the congregation to closely consider its future in a comprehensive long range planning effort. Throughout the twentieth century the Church successfully has answered new challenges. It stands in its 150th year as a testimony to the strength of the Congregational tradition, and its vitality readily is apparent in its many endeavors in its Sesquicentennial year.

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