By Susan Shinn Turner

For the Salisbury Post

It’s a surprisingly cool, misty morning in July. The grass is still wet at Union Lutheran Church Cemetery as Frank Merrell walks the rows alone, headed for a specific gravestone.

He arrives at the monument for his son, Franz, who died in 2002 after a valiant battle with cancer. Franz represents the 10th generation of his family at Union.

Merrell can confirm that Lutheran veterans are buried in the cemetery from every war beginning with the Revolutionary War, with the exception of the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War.

“It’s just deep roots here — that’s all I can say,” Merrell said of his extraordinary sense of belonging. 

Merrell, the other 225 members of Union, and those who have gone before them have felt that same sense of belonging for centuries. 

Union Lutheran Church, 4770 Bringle Ferry Road, will celebrate homecoming in observation of its 250th anniversary next Sunday, Aug. 11. Guest preacher is Bishop Dan Selbo of the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).

Preludes begin at 10:15 a.m. with the service at 10:30 a.m. A covered dish luncheon follows. The service will be live-streamed on the congregation’s Facebook page, Union Lutheran Church — Salisbury, NC.

All former pastors have been invited, as well as all churches in the eastern Rowan area. 

During this milestone celebration, the congregation has invited ordained sons and daughters of the congregation as guest preachers. Those have included the Rev. Dr. Judson Merrell, son of Frank and Dawn Merrell, of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, Lexington, S.C.; the Rev. Dr. Jarrod Lanning, son of Jack and Deena Lanning, St. Matthews Lutheran Church; and the Rev. Tonya Brittain, daughter of Faye Kesler and the late Bob Kesler, Organ Lutheran Church. 

The Rev. Carl Haynes, dean of the NALC’s Piedmont Mission District, will preach in October.

Besides preparing for homecoming, Merrell will speak about Lutherans in Rowan County on Sept. 13 at the Old Stone House as part of German Fest Sept. 13-14. Go to rowanmuseum.org for more details on this fundraiser.

“I’m finding all kinds of interesting information,” Merrell said of his research for the presentation. 

Michael Braun, who built the Old Stone House, and Frederick Fisher applied for Union’s original land grant of 100 acres in 1778. The church retains its original acreage. The request was not approved by the State of North Carolina until 1793.

“That was typical,” Merrell said of the delay.

The church was originally known as the Pine Meeting House. The building sat at the back edge of the church’s property. Braun was a member of that congregation. 

The Old Stone House was built in 1766. After consulting with Aaron Kepley and Evin Burleson, immediate former and current executive directors of Rowan Museum, respectively, Merrell’s best guess is that his congregation started worshipping on the site in 1768. Early records have been lost. What he does know for sure, he says, is that Union is Rowan County’s oldest congregation that has been the same denomination worshipping on the same site.

The church’s original brick sanctuary dates to 1879. Additional structures have been added, expanded and renovated over the years. The steeple was added in 1910; the fellowship building in the mid-1950s; the education building in the early 1960s and the Dutch Meeting Hall in 2000. A renovation in 2000 also tied together these three spaces. The fellowship hall is now the Old Pine Center, and the former education building is used for administrative and meeting space. Union became a charter congregation of the NALC in 2011.

The Rev. John Gottfried Arends, a schoolteacher from Germany later ordained as a Lutheran pastor, founded Union. Along with the Rev. Adolph Nussman — the first Lutheran missionary and preacher in North Carolina — the two had come from Germany to plant churches. Two other notable early pastors of Union were the Rev. Carl Augustus Storch, who came in 1788, and the Rev. Samuel Rothrock (1809-1894) who served Union three times between 1833 and 1844.

Merrell traces his roots to America from Germany to 1675.

“Both sides of my family have been here a long time,” said Merrell, whose mother was a Brady and her mother was an Agner.

Merrell met his wife Dawn when her father, the late Rev. Vernon Frick, came to Union as pastor in 1961. The couple married in 1970. She has served a number of churches as organist, interim organist, or choir director during her long career. She’s now interim organist at Union. Judson and his wife, Carrie, have two daughters, Addison, 16, and Camryn, 13. 

The Rev. Heidi Punt is Union’s 48th pastor. She started work on March 1, 2020 — two weeks before the COVID shutdown.

“I built relationships, through phone calls, emails, cards — whatever it took for them to know I was there,” Punt said 

At first, parishioners came to worship in their cars, with the service broadcast through their car radios. After that, they brought lawn chairs and socially distanced with their families under the massive oak trees on the front lawn. 

“We always had worship,” Punt said.

Punt is a native of South Africa. Her husband, Dieter, serves as pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran, Troutman. They became American citizens in 2022.

Punt noted, “Our members are very proud of their heritage. I’m celebrating that with them. We are using that heritage as a building block for the future. Since I’ve been here, we’ve been intentionally growing our ministries. We support three international missions, nationally we do disaster relief annually where we are needed, and locally, we support a food pantry and the women’s shelter.

“This congregation was founded out of a need for communion, education, and fellowship. This is what we are and this is what the church has called us to be.”

Freelance writer Susan Shinn Turner lives in Raleigh.