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.

English gradually replaced Swedish in worship services in the years following World War I. Sunday morning services in the Swedish language were discontinued altogether in 1944.

Chisago Lake Lutheran Church was the "mother church" to several other congregations in the area: First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Taylor's Falls (1860); Zion Lutheran Church, Chisago City (1874); Immanuel Lutheran Church, Almelund (1887); and Trinity Lutheran Church, North Branch (1887).

The congregation was initially a member of the Minnesota Conference of the Synod of Northern Illinois, which was organized at a meeting it hosted on October 8, 1858. In 1860 thirty-five Swedish Lutheran congregations seceded from that group and organized the Augustana Synod (Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church). Chisago Lakes was affiliated with the Augustana Synod until it (the synod) became a part of the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) in a 1962 merger. The LCA in turn merged with two other Lutheran church bodies in 1988 to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Chisago Lakes was an ELCA member congregation in 2006.

From the guide to the Parish Record Books., 1854-1968 [microform]., (Minnesota Historical Society)