St. Paul Lutheran Church, Botkins

I wish I knew more about this church but unfortunately like so many small churches it does not have a web page. I found this wonderful church while passing the time waiting on my granddaughters next swim event. The church has seen a few major renovations judging from the pictures I found hanging on the wall compared to way the building now looks. I am afraid all I can share are the pictures I took.



Here's a picture that I found hanging that shows the church before the above renovation.



Occasionally I get a chance to be creative. I got a couple of artistic shots while touring the church.



And now to take a peak inside.



I think this is the original entrance housed in the new addition. I found this Communion grouping just outside the doors.



I found this just above one of the doors going into another part of the building. For me its the little things like this that give the church it's character.



The sanctuary was very rustic and simple.





That's one little cozy choir area.



Here is a close up of the alter and the stain glass window above it.





Speaking of stained glass windows the church had a few.



This one of Jesus in the Garden was the main window at the back of the church.









I'll end with my favorite picture from the shoot.

The windows of Bethlehem, Pemberville

The windows, from the Flanagan Art Glass Co. of Chicago in 1909, are true works of art. The painting is wonderful, and the details are incredible.

"I have come to bring you good tidings ..."

"He is not here ... He is risen!"

Jerusalem can be seen in the background.

Mary Magdalene's hair - every brush stroke is perfect!
Look at the expressions on the faces of Mother Mary and St. John ...

"Let the children come to me ..."

Noah's ark ...

"Mary has chosen the better part ..."
The prodigal ...

The sower and the grain; a tribute to the farmers of this rural town.

Such fine little details can be found in these windows!

former Trinity Lutheran, Toledo (New Bethel COGIC)

Trinity Lutheran, now on Glendale in south Toledo, was organized in 1874 to serve the German community in what would eventually come to be known as the Lenk's Hill central-city neighborhood. The history page on their website bears this old photo (already their second church building at the time), along with a brief description of the building:
With a rapidly expanding membership, new facilities were constructed in the area bounded by Vance, Ewing, and Blum streets (Lenk's Hill area). This included a brick two-story four-room school with four teachers, an expanded sanctuary, and a parsonage. No date is given for when the church was actually built, but late 1800's is assumable:
Trinity relocated to their current location in 1958. Knowing that so many of these little old urban churches, formerly belonging to congregations that moved outward, have sometimes been demolished or fallen into disrepair, I started to wonder if perhaps this one was even still there. One sunny early spring day, I went looking -- and it sure was (these two photos by Jeffrey Smith):

The old building is getting a siding job ...

I was rather surprised to see how large the school building really is ...

It's now home to New Bethel COGIC (Church of God in Christ, a historically African-American Pentecostal denomination).

The Lutheran rose has been greeting these Pentecostal brethren all these years ...

The stained-glass windows are just gorgeous, and if those bars help keep them that way, more power to 'em ...

I'm speculating that these windows may have been installed in the 1920's sometime. So much of the detailing in these windows is so similar to the ones at Bethany, my home church (compare to the details in the title bar image at the top of the page, and the image at the bottom of the sidebar) that they may well have come from the same company, although I could find no information at Bethany as to what company manufactured their windows and I'm sure I won't be finding out anything more about these.

I would just love to see these from the inside!

That was a four-room schoolhouse??! Looks like it easily could have been twice that size! But it's just deteriorating now (unlike the church, thankfully). It doesn't appear to have been used much if at all, ever since Trinity moved out ...

St. John's Lutheran Church, Sidney (Chapel)

My favorite soft serve ice cream pallor is right next door to this church. So I thought I'd check it out before I got my big chocolate cone. To my surprise the church was open but very, very ,very dark. I was not able to get any interior shots of the main sanctuary. I will probably have to pay them a visit on a Sunday and grab some pictures after the service.



I didn't have a very good sky to work with but the overcast made it easy to get these shots.





The church has several huge stained glass windows that I will feature in a future post. I am going to have to spend sometime with them in post processing or just do a re-shoot. The one room I found that I could light up was the chapel.



The chapel was small but had these great small stained glass windows.









I can't wait to come back and get some more pictures.

Okay for a teaser here is one of the large stained glass windows with Matthew, Mark, Jesus, Luke and John.