FIRST LUTHERAN CHURCH
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Echoes of men’s labor broke the silence along the barren stretch of prairie land that lay flat beneath the summer sky of 1887. The village of Crowley Switch quickly began to take shape geographically, as well as, characteristically.
Founded by the Duson Brothers, Crowley Switch began to manifest from dream to reality as the laboring efforts of more than one hundred men cleared the land of grass and brush. Soon, the evidence of Avenues, Boulevards, and Streets emerged from the depths of soil and dust as four paired oxen graded a path into the village’s future.
On the western side of the village is where the sun laid its head to rest at the end of the day; a plot of ground, chosen for the First Lutheran Church of Crowley lay barren on West Eighth Street until 1895. The land was donated for the purpose of worship by W.W. Duson.
Originally named, the First German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Crowley in 1893, by its founder Reverend J.F.W. Kossmann, was changed in the early fifties to First Lutheran Church of Crowley, and today is considered to be the “Mother Church” for all existing Lutheran churches in Acadiana, including Jennings, Iota and Lafayette.
After one hundred and eleven years, the original church building still stands. Its century filled with baptisms, weddings, and funerals are the kaleidoscope within the circle of life.
From 1900-1911, the church held classes in the sanctuary for a Christian Day School. Pastors Studtmann and Miebohm taught an enrollment of forty students.The first parsonage was built in 1902 and served the pastors and their families well during the duration of their time in ministry to the church until 1963. At that time a new modern brick home was built beside the church and currently shelters its pastor in service to the Lutheran ministry.
Shortly before the great flood of 1940, the church was remodeled and enlarged with a narthex to the front of its structure. A bathroom and altar care room were added toward the back of the structure. As a result of flood damage, the work had to be redone. The interior of the church underwent a make-over in 1969 as it was once again decorated.
A fellowship hall with a kitchen, bathroom and pastoral office was added in the early 1950’s, and was replaced twenty years later with the church’s current educational building which was completed and dedicated in 1989. Handicap ramps and a porch was also added to the rear of the church.
Regardless of the fluctuating membership numbers or infrequent pastoral vacancies, the First Lutheran Church of Crowley has never closed its doors.