Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church

Lay worship like Diedrich Rode's filled a gap. Lutheran immigrants in Texas long outnumbered their pastors and their funds. When word of the German Protestants' orphaned condition reached C. F. Spittler, director of the Pilger Mission of St. Chrischona in Basel, he sent Theobald G. Kleis and Christoph A. Sager to Texas in 1850 and six ordained ministers the next year. By 1896 at least eighty-five pastors had come from the Swiss school. By the 1970s, worship in languages other than English had become a rarity in Texas outside Spanish-speaking areas of the Rio Grande valley.

What the plaque says

Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church German Lutherans in the community of Cherry Spring began meeting together for worship in the 1850s. Diedrich Rode (1828-1925), a licensed lay minister, provided space in his home for worship services and Sunday School. Christ Church congregation was officially organized in 1905. John and Mary Rode Wendel gave land for a church building in December 1905, and a rock sanctuary was completed in 1906. Services were conducted in the German language until 1922, when occasional English services were added. In the 1950s English became the principal language. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 9.7 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 16 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• National Museum of the Pacific War — 16 mi
  A museum of the war in the Pacific in Chester Nimitz's hometown, dedicated at his request to the two million who served with him, with a garden given by Japan.
• Fort Martin Scott — 18 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.

More markers nearby

• Old Cherry Spring School (Das Alte Schulhaus) — 0.2 mi
• The Marschall-Meusebach Cemetery — 0.8 mi
• Squaw Creek Cemetery — 5.1 mi
• Herman and Willie Lehmann — 6.6 mi