Building Holy Cross Lutheran Church

Using Nature,

a Gift from God

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“The beauty that God gives us in our lives…” Members and visitors of Holy Cross Lutheran Church need only to open the doors to see and be convinced.

            The church was designed to utilize the natural beauty of God’s creation found here in our Tobacco Valley.  Roots of giant trees  are twisted and curled into fantastic works of art.  Wood burls, round, sturdy, and highly polished support the communion rail, flower stands and the baptismal font.  Rocks of many hues and design set beneath a high wall of cedar siding back the sanctuary. In the center of it all stands a wooden cross backlit by panes of red glass.

            Construction was started in June 1959 and Holy Cross Lutheran Church was dedicated in October 1962.  Volunteers toiled over 10,000 hours toward this incredible endeavor.

            Colored rock was found on mountain slopes in the area as far as Warland, 40 miles to the southwest.  Some of the rocks were split to size, but in most cases, stones were left as nature formed them.  Rocks were placed where they would best fit, with particular attention paid only to color.

            Finding the beauty in tree roots was the foundation of the sanctuary. The tree roots garnered for the church were found  mostly from Boulder and Red Mountains. Finding the roots was only a part of the job.  Volunteers needed to stand back and visualize what it would look like as an altar piece, a pulpit stand, or a fine candelabra…  The communion rail is one of a kind; on the left is a root forming the letter A for Alpha and on the right O for Omega.  After the selection, the chosen roots needed to be removed from their secure place in the earth. Ropes, chains, prying, chiseling, sawing, and a lot of muscle work were brought into play before a root was broken loose from the earth.  It took five days to lift one from a mountainside.  Dirt as dry as cement had to be chiseled from many of the roots before further cleaning and shellacking, in which members of the church accumulated more than 600 hours.

            At first when 32-foot cedar logs were unloaded over the bank from the highway many people thought this had been a mistake.  They soon found out that these logs were intended for the shakes of the roof.  Members of the church sawed these logs into 2-foot sections and then constructed hand-hewn shingles

           Colored light streaming through the windows became another work of art. Pieces of glass scraps were obtained from factories and glued to the church’s clear glass windows adding to the beauty of the church

            Every Sunday morning the familiar faces of this congregation gather beneath the cedar shake roof which was so painstakingly labored.  They turn their faces toward the gnarled root pulpit so lovingly polished many years ago and eagerly await this week’s encouraging words of faith in the house of God built for a King…literally.

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Acknowledgment: In order to preserve the integrity of the original article published by the Great Falls Tribune in 1963, some of its wording was used to maintain the reverence they depicted towards the building of our church.

 

References

Reichelt, Clyde. “Tree Roots Form Altar, Pulpit, Candelabra”

             Great Falls Tribune, August 11, 1963, page 4

Tobacco Valley News “Lutherans to Dedicate Eureka, Trego; October 25, 1962