OTTUMWA — The effects of previous uses for the building that houses Christ’s Church are still evident.
The sunken area in which the main part of the sanctuary sits was a skating rink. Fresh drywall and some continuing work mark the building’s transition from a warehouse. The carpet and paint are still new, only a couple years old at most.
But it’s not all new. The stained glass windows inside the sanctuary and the children’s church are the oldest things in the building. And at a century old, it’s not even close.
“It came from St. Paul Lutheran Church up in Hedrick,” said Don LaRue.
Pastor Dan Smith said the Hedrick congregation couldn’t stay open.
“They closed the building and tore down the building. But they wanted the stained glass to go to a church instead of a collector,” he said.
That’s where Judy Emery came in. She’s a member of Christ’s Church. She has roots in Hedrick. It’s where she went to school and graduated. Family knew about the Lutheran church closing, so the congregations started talking.
Christ’s Church wound up buying 13 large stained glass windows for $200, a sum Smith calls “an amazing bargain.” Stained glass windows half the size of a single window from the Hedrick church can easily run $500. The Hedrick congregation was willing to forego the potential profit to ensure the windows stayed in a church.
“The whole purpose of it was to keep them out of collectors’ hands,” Smith said.
But purchasing the windows and getting them to Ottumwa for display were two different issues. One posed a particular challenge. It is a round window, perhaps five feet in diameter. It shows Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Removing it meant pulling it out of the wall from the outside.
The big trick was getting to the window from the outside. It was a good 30 feet off the ground. LaRue used a large lift to get to the window. The entire thing shook, window and all, every time anything moved.
“They didn’t breathe until they got it down to the ground,” Emery said.
The crews numbered the wood frames around the windows. That let LaRue restore the frames to the windows after refinishing the wood. Restoration took a good year. LaRue quit keeping track of how long he spent when he hit 212 hours.
The windows have Christian symbols included. One features a dove. Another has the Ten Commandments. A beehive features on a third.
Several have old inscriptions. One, written in German, shows the window was donated to St. Paul’s by the Sunday school.
Lighting posed another problem. Stained glass doesn’t look like much without light behind it. The Christ’s Church sanctuary lacks exterior windows.
That meant finding a way to backlight the windows. But incandescent or halogen lights get too hot. It finally took 1,000 feet of rope lighting to get the effect right.
Experts told the congregation they would probably have at least one window break. Removing a window, transporting it, reattaching a frame and hanging them is a lot of movement and a lot of shaking for old, heavy glass. The workers had to keep the glass upright at all times. The glass and leading is too fragile to support itself horizontally.
Not one window broke.
The church plans a dedication ceremony for July 29. They’re inviting the last members from St. Paul Lutheran Church as guests. The windows aren’t in their original places, but the Hedrick congregation’s goal of keeping them in a church was met.
Matt Milner can be reached at (641) 683-5359 or via e-mail at mwmilner@mchsi.com
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