HOPE   EVANGELICAL
LUTHERAN   CHURCH

As far as is known, the first Lutheran service in Canada was held in 1619, by the Reverend Rasmus Jensen, chaplain to Denmark's ill-fated Jens Munck expedition searching for the Northwest Passage aboard the frigate Enhjørningen (Unicorn).   The ship and crew were stranded on the shore of Hudson Bay in the autumn of that year, and forced to overwinter near Churchill, Manitoba.   Captain Munck's diary records that Pastor Jensen conducted a Holy Communion service on Christmas Day, 1619.   Though stricken with scurvy and soon to die from it, the good Pastor preached from his sick bed as late as January 23, 1620.

It is fitting then, even so many centuries later, that the first Lutheran church founded in the seaport of Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, should be founded by Danes as well, and eventually to be named Hope, a Christian concept with a suitably nautical symbol, the anchor.

The Lutheran Church in Saint John was founded in 1931, by the then numerous Danish immigrant community within the city.   At an open-air meeting in a field on Sandy Point Road that year, under the guidance of Pastor Ravnkilde Møller from New Denmark, the Danes decided to form the Elijah Danish Lutheran Church.   The new congregation was a mission church under the guidance of the Bishop of Copenhagen, who sent our first pastors to us to conduct services in the Danish language.   For the first two decades of our existence the church was known locally simply as the "Danish Church".

Hope Lutheran's present church building is the fourth in which the congregation has met.   At first, through the kindness of the United Church of Canada, the Danes gathered for services in the former Zion Methodist Church at the corner of Rockland Road and Burpee Avenue, where Holy Trinity School now stands.   The congregation soon moved into further temporary quarters on Rockland Road opposite Parks Street, a newly acquired parsonage with rooms converted to use as a sanctuary.   In 1936, the congregation acquired the property at 4 Second Street, a two and one-half storey ornate frame Victorian, constructed in 1849 as the family home of T.E. Millidge, after whom Millidgeville is named.   The house, formerly known as the Swiss Cottage, immediately became the religious and social centre of the Danish community in Saint John, joined there by other citizens of Scandinavian origin.

As the dark years of World War II came upon us and the port of Saint John became a centre of convoy activity, the "Danish Church" became a magnet for the many Scandinavian Allied seamen sailing to and from the port, not just Danes, but Norwegians and even the neutral Swedes.   All were welcomed and swelled the congregation in those years when faith and hope were all that many had.   Despite the darkness of the war, the presence of so many new Scandinavians at the church made for some memorable Christmas celebrations there.

For twelve years services were held in converted rooms within that house, until it burned in a two-alarm blaze on the night of 28 February 1949.   Only a few of the church properties could be saved by the hands of man:   the pulpit was rescued from the blaze by Mr & Mrs Magnus Funk;   the organ and the piano were saved by the brave efforts of the Saint John firemen.   But it seems that other properties chose to save themselves -- the bronze menorah disappeared when the wooden altar and the floor beneath it were consumed by the flames, only to be found unscathed in the basement when the rubble was later cleared.   Among the many church properties lost in the blaze was the altarpiece, a beautiful oil painting of Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane.

With the loss of the Swiss Cottage the church moved into temporary quarters while rebuilding commenced at Second Street, a surplus army building on Burma Road near the shipyard.   Almost from the moment the fire was extinguished members of the congregation began cleaning up the ruins and building the foundation for the new structure.

The new church building was to be more fireproof, and was built as a simple nave for worship and an upper room for fellowship.   Designed by Viggo Sørensen, it was begun that Spring and, by November 1949 the exterior was largely complete, with most of the work done by members of the congregation.   Construction was advanced to the point that services were held within the upper room that winter while work continued on the nave.   Completed in the Spring and Summer of 1950, the new building was dedicated in August 1950.

Originally a member church of the Dansk Kirke i Udlandet — the Danish (Lutheran) Church Abroad — we inevitably lost touch with Denmark during the war years.   In 1941 the name of the church was changed from Elijah Lutheran to the First Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church, the name under which the church officially reincorporated in 1944 as a member church of the United Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America -- the Pietist wing of Danish Lutheranism in North America.   In 1957, following Pastor Emil Nommesen's tenure, and in response to the growing numbers of non-Danes within our congregation, Saint John's Lutherans left the Danish Church to join the Nova Scotia Synod (later renamed the Atlantic Conference) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.   In 1967 the "Danish Church" was rededicated as "Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church" and since 1986 has been a member church of the Atlantic Conference of the Eastern Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.

Although our foundation and early history is Danish, for most of our existence Hope has been a congregation of Lutherans from a variety of ethnicities:   Scandinavian, German, Baltic, and many other nations from which Lutherans have emigrated, as well as native-born Canadians of all backgrounds.   Our services are conducted in the English language, and in accordance with the Lutheran Book of Worship, supplemented by additional hymns within the With One Voice hymnal.

Hope has a small but dedicated congregation.
Visitors and new members are always welcome in our church.
On Becoming a Lutheran