Chisago Lake Lutheran Church (Center City, Minn.)

A group of Swedish settlers began meeting informally without a pastor in the Chisago Lakes area in 1851. Chisago Lake Lutheran Church was organized May 12, 1854 by Rev. Erland Carlsson as the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Congregation in Chisago Lake. Carlsson moved on shortly after the congregation was organized. Eric Norelius, then a 20-year-old student who later became a famous name in Swedish-American Lutheranism, arrived a week after Carlsson left and remained through the summer of 1854. Norelius first preached at Chisago Lake on May 25, 1854, and on June 12 he began to teach school there as well. Pehr Anderson Cederstam was the congregation's first resident pastor, first preaching there on May 27, 1855.

A meeting house was constructed in the summer of 1854. Planned and equipped to serve not as a church but as a school, this structure was also used for services. The congregation constructed its first church building in 1856. That structure served the congregation until a large brick church building was built in 1882-1883. The brick church building was struck by lightning and burned in 1888, and was promptly rebuilt on the same site. That structure was still in use by the congregation in 2006.

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