Settling down to serve St. Paul’s Lutheran Church of Fort Wayne and Zion Lutheran Church of Decatur (Nicknamed “Friedheim”) in Northeast Indiana did not stop Friedrich Wyneken, full of zeal, from preaching, teaching and organizing congregations whenever he had the time. He visit other settlements on weekdays and preached in them. The circuit rider felt he could not organize these stations into congregations because mostly they lacked either the sufficient knowledge of the faith or piety (at the time, Friedrich was a pietist — but that’s another story!) and because he simply could not properly care for them.
It broke his heart to have to ignore the many pleas to come and prepare children for confirmation and to meet many desperate needs. In September of 1839, one hundred and eighty years ago, the very frustrated circuit rider reported to Friedrich Schmidt of Pittsburgh that at least five preaching stations lay within forty miles of Fort Wayne. These he visited more or less regularly. In addition, he planned to make at least two larger trips a year to do what he could throughout the region. He could see whole villages sinking back into paganism. He could only promise to return from time to time and tell them of his many letters to Germany, begging for help. On his longer trips, sometimes four to six weeks from home, Wyneken had to depart settlement after settlement, sick with the knowledge that not even a survey missionary would minister in these places for the next few years.
In January of 1840, the circuit rider reported to the American Home Missionary Society that he served two stations beyond his parishes on a regular basis, one nineteen miles and the other thirty miles distant. Sometime during 1840, Wyneken set out for Chicago to help Lutherans who had asked for his help. Weather prevented him from traveling further than Elkhart, where he ministered for a time before returning to Fort Wayne. In 1841, Wyneken reported to his friend Friedrich Schmidt that he so wanted to bring the joy of the Easter season to settlements to his west that he traveled so often that he couldn’t even correspond until he returned to his little Fort Wayne “Elijah’s Room.”
In addition to the congregations and places documented above, the oral traditions in the Northeast corner of Indiana credit Wyneken with ministering at preaching stations that would one day become congregations throughout Allen and Adams Counties, Avilla, Bremen, Corunna, Elkhart, Huntington, Kendallville, Mishawaka and South Whitley in Indiana and Wilshire (“Schumm”) and Wapakoneta, Ohio.
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Gee, he went where there were people who need Jesus.
Why don’t we do that now ?
We do! And in America, we don’t even have to leave our house to get them to come to us!
Thanks, I think he is in my late husbands ‘ family tree. These stories bring them to life.
I will share with my daughter who does ancestry work .
My mother in laws father and grandfather were both pastors with family going back to the Buuck household near Fort Wayne