Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
DuBois PA

The origins of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church were connected with the Luthersburg parish. Rev. Edmud Manges, who had formally organized the Rockton congregation in 1875, also established a congregation of 19 members in the new and growing town of DuBois Pennsylvania on February 19, 1876. After Pastor Manges left in 1878, the connection with Luthersburg was not maintained, for the Allegheny Synod history reports that this congregation "after a while fell into the hands of the Pittsburgh Synod of the General Council."

It was Rev. J. H. Klein, Pastor of a General Council church in Reynoldsville PA who restarted the DuBois congregation when St. Paul drew Lutherans from two different traditions. As a General Council church, it was conservatively "Lutheran", retaining such traditions as a more liturgical worship, wine for communion, and clergy vestments.

Members coming from churches belonging to the General Synod brought with them the influence of a broad American Protestant tradition which featured a less liturgical worship style, grape juice for communion and no vestments for the pastor. By 1906, there were enough members of the General Synod tradition at St. Paul to withdraw and form a General Synod congregation. In May of that year, three meetings were held in the home of C. Luther Lowe in which the Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church was organized and Rev. A. R. Longanecker called as Pastor.

The first worship service was held June 10, 1906, at the Central YMCA where the congregation continued to meet while a church building was begun on E. Scribner Avenue. An association with the Oklahoma church also began in 1906. Trinity's impressive building, with attached parsonage, was dedicated December 20, 1914. The town of DuBois was booming and so did the new congregation, having some 300 members by 1916.

For the next 50 years, Trinity was the largest Lutheran church in DuBois, with a large Sunday School, Sunday School band, and a number of other organizations. During the long pastorate of Rev. Sam Sigler there was a major renovation to the Sunday School rooms in 1948 and redecoration of the sanctuary in 1954.

Trinity's baptized membership peaked in 1967 at about 700, but average attendance was less than half that number. Over the following 20 years, a combination of factors in the church and in the community transformed Trinity from a large to a small congregation. Christ Lutheran, born of the successful merger of St. Paul and Lebanon Lutheran congregations has become the large Lutheran church in DuBois, but also Trinity's partner in ministry.

Having come through a painful transition, Trinity's new identity and sense of confidence and hope continues to emerge. New people are coming, but the area of great growth is in the spirit of warmth, hospitality, and Christian love which continues its gracious way among us.