The first gathering at the new St. Mark’s Lutheran Church 60 years had one essential for Lutherans enjoying fellowship after the service.

“We didn’t have any cooking materials, but we did have a coffee pot,” said Geanne Pankratz, one of the charter members of the church.

And, as most people know, they said, Norwegian and German Lutherans love their coffee.

Pankratz, Del Grosche and Dorothy Collins were all among the original congregation, which is affiliated with the Missouri Synod, transferred their membership from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, which had become overcrowded during a growth explosion in northwest Minot in the 1950s.

The women recall that there were 13 families that left St. Paul’s to form the new church. The women said they were tickled to be part of a new congregation.

Listed charter members of the church were the Howard Atwood, Willard Benton, Ray Bibow, Homer Cogdill, Carl Collins, Allen Drady, Paul Froemming, Leo Gleason, Ed Goodfellow, Louis Grimm, Jayson Graba, Harry Grosche, Donald Gulstrand, Lawrence Hahn, Harold Hanson, Fred Hassler, Dale Hight, Merritt Hoffman, Maurice Isaacson, Albert Kaul, Erwin Klimpel, Luther Kjos, A.E. Kundert, Richard Kobernick, Dennis Lenzmeier, Theodore Merrill, Kenneth Miller, Vincent Pankratz, Louise Pede, Robert Plagens, Lena Przymus, Paul Puseman, Clarence Rosenau, Marvin Swenson, Robert Thomale, Louis Williamson and Floyd Woodiwiss families. Geanne Pankratz said there were 85 children among those families.

During the first few months, Sunday school classes were held in Longfellow Elementary while a chapel was under construction.

The growing congregation celebrated many other firsts during its next few years.

According to church records, the first choir was organized in 1957 with Lawrence Hahn as the choir director. The first confirmation class was confirmed on April 14, 1957. Gregory Atwood, William Bibow, Paulette Froemming, Kendall Goodfellow, Richard Kjos, LaVerne Klimpel, Marion Puseman and Lauren Teschner were members of the class. The first adults to be confirmed in the congregation were Allan and Jacqueline Dailey. The first couple married at the new church were Melvin LaFontaine and Mary Ann Williams on May 19.

Pews were installed in the church that August at a cost of $3,000.

When the church building was dedicated on Sept. 22, 1957, there were 268 baptized members of the congregation and 138 communicants.

Other firsts followed. In 1958, the church employed a custodian at $40 per month. The first Boy Scout troop was chartered that year as well.

A kindergarten class was started at St. Mark’s in 1962, with 19 children enrolled. Susan Collins, who was the second baby baptized in the new church, was also among the children who attended the kindergarten.

“I am as old as the church,” said Susan Collins, who is still a church member.

By 1964, the church’s Walther League was so large that it had to be divided into two separate groups, the Senior Walther League and the Junior Walther League.

The Sunday School Building was purchased from Dacotah Homes at a cost of $7,850 in 1965. Average attendance in 1965 reached 419 people and 445 people by 1967. In 1969, plans were in the works for a new church building. But in that year, Sunday school attendance was also sharply down due to the Souris River flood that affected the entire city.

The new church building was completed by 1971 and its communicant membership reached 803 in 1972.

By 1978, the year-end communicant membership was 962 and the number of baptized people in the congregation was 1,315.

In 1981, the church kindergarten closed its doors in May, after having operated for 19 years. Evelyn Hildebrand had been the kindergarten teacher for 12 of those years. Membership had reached a high of 1,037 communicants and 1,525 baptized people, making St. Mark’s the largest congregation in the district. In that year, St. Mark’s celebrated its 25th anniversary.

In 2006, the church celebrated its 50th anniversary, with Pankratz among the anniversary committee members.

During the Souris River flood of 2011, the church escaped largely unscathed, the women said, though some church members were directly affected.

In 2016, the church is still going strong under Pastor Carlyle Roth, who has guided the church over its past few decades. A vacation Bible school filled with young children was in session this week in the church’s education center.

The charter members said the church has an active congregation that is devoted to sharing Christ with each other and with the community. A quilting circle has made quilts for high school seniors from the congregation who are graduating. Youth attend three different confirmation classes and programming under the leadership of Caleen Larson.

The women said they have attended Bible study cirlces at the church. One circle, the Naomi Circle, gives Bibles to third-graders who are starting Sunday school. Many of the children keep their Bibles as they attend religion classes through confirmation when they are teenagers. The church also has a handbells choir and a youth choir.

The church is so special because everyone in the congregation cares for one another.

“To think we’ve been coming to the same place to worship for 60 years is kind of awesome,” said Pankratz.