ALUMNI The One Thin Photo courtesy of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod/Erik M. Lunsford.
Douglas H. Spittel
T
he First German Evangelical Lutheran congregation of Pittsburgh has heard the Gospel and received the forgiveness of our Lord for 183 years in four different church buildings dedicated to the Holy Trinity in the City of Pittsburgh. Andrew Jackson was president of the 25 states in America when the congregation was founded. Since then, the city of Pittsburgh grew into the world’s leading producer of glass, aluminum, and steel. Then, beginning in the late 1970s, all of that industry collapsed over the course of a decade. Pittsburgh reinvented itself as a world leader in banking, healthcare, and robotics. Alcoa Corporation and Pittsburgh Plate Glass gave way to Google, Uber, and PNC Bank. Carnegie Steel gave birth to Carnegie Mellon University and the National Robotics Consortium. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center gave us the polio vaccine and advances in organ transplants. Children who once grew up in the smoke of the mills began growing up in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. The once blue-collar population turned increasingly white collar and, like the national trend, birth rates plummeted. First German, now sporting the conflated name of First Trinity, weathered the changes, but not without cost or peril. Records from the 1870s show a congregation of over 1,500 in which the pastor conducted a wedding, baptism, or funeral every day. If you were Lutheran and spoke German in Pittsburgh, you were a member of First Trinity. 24
Due to the size of the congregation and the growing character of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, First Trinity was instrumental in the establishment of many new congregations throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Industries grew, families moved to newer and wealthier areas, babies were born, and the church grew numerically. It was simple.
Until it wasn’t. The sexual revolution of the 1960s, which caused a nationwide fertility drop, coupled with the economic disaster of the early 1980s created a perfect storm in Pittsburgh that many congregations, regardless of denomination, did not weather. Given the tenacity of even the smallest congregations, it took 20 years for the tsunami of demographic death to sweep over the churches. As the older generation made their way to the Church Triumphant, there was no one to replace them. No one was reaching out to people in the community. Even the mighty Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh saw their weekly attendance at Mass drop from 200,000 in the year 2000 to 100,000 by 2015. Parishes have been consolidated and churches have been closed. The Lutheran Church— Missouri Synod has seen nine Pittsburgh congregations close in the past 30 years, with a few more presently struggling. For the Life of the World
