On the first Easter Sunday of the COVID-19 pandemic, Faith Lutheran Church, which worshipped out of a three-story wood building at 311 Broadway Street, in Cambridge, put up a large banner in its front garden. ‘We Will Rise,’ it said — a nod to both the hardships of lockdown and to the central Easter story.
The same banner hung there on Easter Sunday 2023 when a six-alarm fire destroyed the 115-year-old building.
The banner survived the fire, which Faith Lutheran’s pastor, Rev. Robin Lutjohann, finds fitting — if not providential. “You could see this banner in front of a charred, gnarled, destroyed carcass of a building,” said Lutjohann, 41, who’s about six-feet tall and has close-cropped hair. “So there was already the promise and the mission and the hope that we would carry.”
More than three years after a blaze that both the FBI and Cambridge Police believe was arson, Faith Lutheran is operating out of a church belonging to the Pentecostal Tabernacle — which owns two locations in Cambridge, and offered the second to Faith Lutheran — on Columbia Street in Central Square. The police investigation into the fire appears to have stalled. “I haven’t heard from the investigators in a couple years, so I’m sort of assuming it’s closed,” Lutjohann said. “We have moved on from wondering what, who or why.” (Cambridge Police did not respond to a request for comment.)
The congregation has resumed the bulk of its activities at its new home, with the notable exception of a popular soup kitchen it ran in partnership with The Tremont Street Synagogue. (Pentecostal Tabernacle lacks the necessary industrial facilities, so the kitchen is temporarily being run out of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church nearby.) The Broadway Street location, indeed, provided readier opportunities to collaborate; both the Tremont Synagogue and the ISB Mosque were minutes away. “It was a really beautiful grassroots friendship between these three different faith communities,” Lutjohann said. “I called it the holiest block in Cambridge.”
Faith Lutheran’s current home, though less than a mile from Broadway, feels isolated by comparison. “Broadway is a very busy street,” said Lutjohann. “People would just come off the street and be curious and walk into this beautiful building and want to see what’s going on. It connected us to the neighborhood. That’s something we do miss.”
Still, the congregation deliberated for months after the fire about how to proceed. “We put everything on the table,” Lutjohann said. Possible solutions included merging with another church, selling the land and buying property elsewhere, or building a mixed-use development that was part-residential building, part-church. Rebuilding at the Broadway location, moreover, would be arduous and expensive, as the previous structure’s wood foundations and stucco walls meant it was a “total loss,” according to Lutjohann. “If it had been a stone building, we would be talking about a totally different project.” (The church was also probably underinsured. “We never anticipated something like this would happen,” Lutjohann admitted.)
The congregation voted to rebuild on Broadway anyway. Its decision was further evidence, Lutjohann told me, of an obdurate streak that has defined Faith Lutheran since its 1908 establishment. The church’s founding generation of Swedish immigrants spent 17 years searching for a plot of land before they found the site on Broadway. And when certain churches relocated to the suburbs from urban areas in the 1980s — a phenomenon sometimes labelled ‘white flight’ — Faith Lutheran stayed put. “I think our old Swedes were just too stubborn,” said Lutjohann.
The new building is set to be sleeker and more modern than its predecessor, which for all its hardscrabble charm had serious design and accessibility flaws. (There was no entry to the church on the first floor.) “The old space was really precious to us, but it was built for a time and a community that no longer exists,” Lutjohann told me.
The congregation is working with the Cambridge-based firm SMMA on the new church. (It has also appointed a contractor, Delphi.) There’s a mockup on Faith Lutheran’s website. It will have considerably more outdoor space, including a spacious garden area, and will be on the western side of the property — chiefly to increase sun exposure, Lutjohann said. There will be just one level (the razed structure had three), and flexible seating. “It’s a space that’s beautiful and appropriate for Christian worship,” Lutjohann said, “but also flexible enough that it can be used by our interfaith partners around the corner when they need space.”
Immediately after the fire, the church estimated that rebuilding would cost up to $9 million, but this was before it opted for a scaled-down project. It now hopes to raise between $4 million and $6 million, and last year launched a fundraising campaign, called ‘Forward in Faith,’ that aimed to collect an initial $1 million from just the congregation’s 100 or so members. The initiative has already fetched $700,000, a sum Lutjohannan described as “extraordinary.” Fundraising is now in a second phase focused on the church’s traditional partners: neighbours, educational institutions, and other faith organizations, Christian and not.
The size of the new church hinges on the success of the fundraising campaign. For now, a website mockup is the most detailed rendering available; SMMA will produce exact blueprints “once we know how much money people have committed to giving over a course of three years,” Lutjohann said.
He remains confident, however, that the project will succeed. Indeed, he’s fond of referring to Faith Lutheran as a “post-death” congregation — that is, one that’s regularly staved off decline, from the Swedish immigrants who worked so tirelessly for the church in the early 20th-century, to the congregants of the late ‘90s who fought to keep it open in the face of dwindling attendance and enthusiasm.
“I am blown away by how unanxious and how hopeful this congregation is,” Lutjohann said. “And that’s why I know it’s going to be around.”
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