The German immigrant church felt the pressure
of WW1 to open the community to the English
language, and in
1920 began providing
services in both German and English,
but not until 1936 was English
established as the dominate language of the
church administrations.
It was in 1940 that the
second threat to the building was engaged,
a fire which broke out in the main spire
and spread quickly.
Although there was
questions about its salvage ability,
after nearly a $50,000 reinvestment,
the building was restored and ministry
continued.
The years during and immediately
after WW2 saw the advancement
of the educational mission of St. Paulus.
Two new educational buildings provided an
expansion of the school into
a K through 9th / school program.
The turmoil of the 60s and 70s engaged
St. Paulus in significant ways. In 1976, this
″mother of the Missouri Synod Lutheran
Churches″ in the west, citing to remain free
from institutional controls,
left the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
in protest and helped establish a predecessor
Lutheran body which would eventually in
1987 form the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America. These tumultuous years also
affected the geography around St. Paulus,
subjecting it to redevelopment, housing
developments, and population turnovers.
The growing disaffection with the institution
of the church also added to
the difficulty of ministry and mission.
Declining membership, difficulty in
sustain operating budgets, finally forced
the 118 year old school to close its doors
in 1990, and to burden the church
with operating costs which stretched its
membership to the edge. The people that the
congregation served came to reflect its
challenging environment, that is,
homeless, HIV/AIDS, and the poor.
Most notable in its ministries was a
weekly supper called the Friendship Banquet,
in which host congregations
and service organizations were given
the opportunity to provide a restaurant
quality dinner to HIV/AIDS guests.
The program continued until 2006.
Then in 1995, disaster struck the
congregation, when its 103 year old
cathedral was destroyed by fire,
erasing its spires from the San Francisco
skyline, and casting the congregation into
the shadows. Though blessed with
an insurance settlement, the ability
of the congregation to plot a future
course from the ashes was limited.
Only after a call was extended to
Pastor Daniel Solberg in 1999
was their movement towards an affirmative
future. During the years under
Pastor Solberg, leadership ministries
to the homeless and impoverished
continued unabated. There was a
significant effort to develop the St. Paulus
property into a multimillion dollar
Alzheimer Church Complex
but HUD funding fell through
at the last moment.
Timeline At present the congregation
plans to provide its property
to the building of workforce housing,
making itself a residence in
the complex with a built out 10,000 sq ft
sanctuary-office condominium on the site of
its historic cathedral. In groundbreaking
creativity St. Paulus, in May of 2007,
has left the safety of its church facility,
the old elementary building of
its closed day school, and
is becoming a ″church without walls″
in the Fillmore district of San Francisco,
learning once again the importance of ministry
in the streets, in the neighborhood,
and in the lives of those who are
not part of the church community.
For the next three or four
years the congregation will experiment
with such ministry, and
develop a sense of identity which
does not rest on the security
of a building, but on the ministry
of Jesus in the world.
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