Church Closing Seeds New Life in Indonesia July 27, 2024

For over 80 years, believers entered the doors of Bethlehem Lutheran Church to worship, baptize their babies, get married, and be buried in Christ. But in 2022, their congregation had to make a heartbreaking decision, and in April 2023, those doors closed and locked behind them forever as they dissolved their church.

“It was very much a grief process,” shared Bethlehem’s final congregation president Don Kuhlmann. “I knew in my heart after all the discussions [as a congregation], all the prayers, that it was the right thing, but it didn’t make it easy.”

For months, the members of Bethlehem had come together to discuss their shrinking membership and lack of a pastor. “One of our leaders, Dielda Kuhlmann, finally said, ‘Maybe that’s God’s message. Maybe God’s message is that we need to close.’ And I’m not sure that closure was the first thing we got from that either. It kind of evolved slowly and painfully,” shared Joel Jackmann, Bethlehem’s vice president.
Then began the long process of sorting through 80 years of paperwork, memories, and most importantly, their belongings! Items like pews, hymnals, the organ, and even the church’s sign out at the road needed to be sold or find new homes.

The building was sold to a thriving Moldovan congregation, while other items were donated to churches who needed them. “At first, it felt sad to let these things go, but that sadness turned to joy to see how much the churches and charities valued and appreciated these gifts from Bethlehem,” shared Joel. Don continued, “Over and over and over, the things we had were just what someone else needed at the moment!”

Having sold everything that wasn’t being gifted away, the congregation now had to write a will, stating how the money from those sales should be used. “You’ve got this money, and what do you do with it? And that’s when we met our group and sat down and figured out, with lots of prayer, where our money should go,” explained Teresa Feltmann, a member of Bethlehem’s legacy team.

That’s when the congregation decided to send some of their funds to the Lutheran Heritage Foundation. “Our first concern was, it’s Lutheran,” continued Teresa. “We stay Lutheran, Missouri Synod, and we go from there.”

“Somebody from LHF talked to our circuit of pastors,” explained Dielda, “and then we started researching, what does LHF do? So we looked into it, and that you’re translating all the books but not the Bible, that was perfect! We had worked with Lutheran Bible Translators, and we thought, these guys do all the other books that are good to read, too!”

With the $82,000 gift from Bethlehem, LHF has so far printed 6,000 copies of A Child’s Garden of Bible Stories into the Batak language for Muslim Indonesia, with plans for many more translations to come.
“We wanted a legacy. That word was very important to us. Something to be remembered by,” said Dielda.
Teresa agreed, “It’s sharing our faith. It’s sharing God’s Word. I mean, we know the money that we got [from the sales] is God’s money, and when you can pass it on, you can enrich someone’s life. A young person will grow up with the love of Christ, and that’s important.”

“While Bethlehem no longer has a brick and mortar church or a gathering congregation, the faith taught there lives on in the hearts of 6,000 new believers in Indonesia,” said Rev. Dr. Matthew Heise, LHF executive director.