“This is my command: Love each other.” - John 15:17
At Christ Memorial Lutheran Church (CMLC), we are committed to following Christ’s command of love. Those are not just lofty words. Love is something we discover and are renewed by in tangible ways. Every faith community is different. CMLC can be described as God’s love active in three distinct ways:
We live out God’s love in the welcoming community that we share. CMLC is the kind of community where your name will be remembered. Children, youth, adults, and elders are interconnected. Together, we love to worship, learn, play, and eat!
We live out God’s love through our early childhood ministry, the Tender Learning Center (TLC). Way back in 1986, the people of Christ Memorial acted on the belief that they were called to start a childcare ministry serving the local community. Over the years, this wonderful ministry has grown, and it remains a vital part of our identity. TLC serves a diverse group of families caring for children from infants up through school-agers.
We live out God’s love in our continual focus on serving our neighbors. If you visit CMLC, you will soon notice all the opportunities to love neighbors locally and around the globe. Here is a list of many of our active service connections: Center for Leadership and Neighborhood Engagement, Interfaith Outreach, Compassion International, Hawassa Hope, Our Saviour’s Housing, Luther Park Bible Camp, ELCA God’s Work Our Hands Day, ELCA World Hunger Appeal, Feed My Starving Children, Children’s Health Ministries - Haiti, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, and SERRV.
Our Story
In January of 1958, the church (originally known as the Minnetonka Mission Church) was founded by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Before a building was ever constructed, the church gathered in the home of the Millie and Harvey Suhl family for worship and meetings. By 1959, the first Christ Memorial Lutheran Church building was constructed at Ford Road and Wayzata Boulevard. In 1967, the church building was sold, while construction of the new facility on Sunset Trail got underway. During the construction, services were held at the Minnetonka Seventh Day Adventist Church. The new building was dedicated and open for use in 1969.
In 1977, Christ Memorial left the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and joined the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC). During this time, many LCMS congregations joined the AELC. These decisions were connected to the dismissal of 45 of the 50 faculty members of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1973 that sparked a schism in the denomination. This was a tumultuous time in Protestant churches in the United States. Part of the rich theological and cultural fabric of the present day church emerged from these struggles over Christian perspectives on the Bible and matters of faith including social controversies, such as protests of the Vietnam War. In 1988, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) was formed by a merger of multiple Lutheran bodies including the AELC. Christ Memorial’s story touches on some fascinating chapters in the history of Lutherans in the United States.
In 1981, Christ Memorial called Rev. Jane Buckley-Farlee to serve as Assistant Pastor. At present, women make up about one-third of all clergy in the ELCA and about half of all students training to be pastors in seminaries, but this was very different four decades ago. The first ordination of a woman as a pastor in a Lutheran church body in the United States took place in 1970 in the Lutheran Church in America (LCA), and in the AELC the first woman was not ordained until 1977. Pastor Jane served Christ Memorial from 1981 until 1995 and was an important trailblazer helping to reshape the church we know today.
In 1986, Christ Memorial made the important decision to develop a childcare center. The Tender Learning Center (TLC) was founded and served fifteen children when it first opened. In 2001, the church undertook an expansion focused on further establishing this childcare ministry. This was an important moment in the missional history of the church. The community stepped forward in faith responding to the call to nurture children and care for a great diversity of families in our local community. From its beginning, Christ Memorial has been outward focused and dedicated to God’s command that we love each other. We are thankful for generations of faithfulness and excited about the future.
