An Unforgettable Church Parade in Montello, Wisconsin

Remembrances

by

Local Church

Special to United Methodist Insight | March 13, 2026

I will tell my favorite parade story this coming Palm Sunday, March 29, when I gather with the folks at Trinity United Methodist Church in Montello, Wisconsin.

We will read the account from Luke’s Gospel of Jesus parading through Jerusalem on a donkey. And we will sing “Hosanna, Loud Hosanna” while waving our palm branches, as we always do at the beginning of Holy Week.

Then I will tell them about another holy parade: the one I was privileged to lead through the streets of Montello 42 years ago when I was their pastor. It happened as the congregation marched from the old church building to the new one, which was completed in the fall of 1984.

The date was November 11, 1984. We had gathered at the old church on State Highway 23, just two blocks up the street from where the Kwik Trip and the granite quarry waterfalls are today.

The Sunday before parade day we held the last full service in the old building. We recognized all those who were baptized, confirmed and married in that place that had been sacred to us since it was built in 1875. I wrote in my journal, “240 people attended that last service. We served communion at the rail. The atmosphere was both hopeful and tense. Many were sad about leaving the old church. These included some on the building committee who had worked so hard on the plans for the new church, which had been completed just days before.”

On parade day, the following Sunday, we gathered at the old building for the last time for a brief service of deconsecration. The pews, the pulpit, the piano, the organ and the stained-glass windows had already been removed and were waiting for us in the new church building.

F. Rogers Constance read a poem he had written for the occasion:

Dear Trinity, from your bustling basement to your far sounding bell.

You served Montello and its hinterland well.

From brick bastioned base to your triple crossed peak,

You acknowledged the celebrant, the mourner, the meek,

Who knelt at your open communion rail…

O Trinity, You have meant so much…

Your Spirit now moves to another sod,

All things work for good for them who love God.

Then I stepped up onto the chancel for the last time and spoke the words of deconsecration I had prepared.

“As Abraham followed the Lord’s call to go to a new land, we now follow His call to move to a new house of worship. Before we go, we must say goodbye to this place where God has met with us for over a century.

“Here we have baptized our babies, confirmed our youth, celebrated our marriages, and mourned our dead. It has been a holy place for us. Within these walls, and through the relationships we have had with those who have gathered here Sunday after Sunday, we have known God.

“It is hard to say good-bye to a place that holds so much meaning. But scripture teaches us, and we know in our hearts, that the living God is not confined to any building or any geographical location. So, we go where God calls us.

“This place which was holy for us, and which we used for our most sacred functions, we give back to the world for common uses. We shall worship here no more. It shall be to us as any other place of business or house in God’s world.”

I wrote in my journal the next day, “The old church was full for the deconsecration service, older members sitting, and over a hundred standing around the walls of the now empty sanctuary.”

Mark Robinson, Paul Sveum, Wayne Reiche, Jim Paul, Verne Hunborg, and others from the Board of Trustees, carried the altar down the steps from the chancel, across the floor where many a bride had been walked up the aisle, and out the door to Herb Sheller’s pick-up truck. Confirmation students carried the symbols of our faith: the cross, the big pulpit Bible, the altar candles, even the 4th place trophy the softball team won in the Marquette Days tournament that year. 

Those carrying the Christian and the American flags fell in behind the altar, followed by a host of children carrying placards with the names of dozens of saints from the congregation. The names included Hazel Herrick, Bill Egly, Renee Mueller, Les Olson, Mike Kilbride, Gordon Ritchie, Mary Cartwright, Florence Kessier, Eleanor Steinhaus’s mother, Mary Cummings, who with her husband C.A., founded a Montello Funeral Home in 1905, and Isaac Smith, the circuit-riding preacher who began his ministry in the area in 1848.

Our seven-month-old son, Orrin, rode in a stroller pushed by my wife, Jo. Our five-year-old daughter, Kati, carried a placard bearing June Norton’s name. June had helped plan the kitchen in the new church. It was one of her regrets, as she lay dying, that she would not live to see it. I had promised her she would be remembered on moving day.

A photo that appeared in both The Marquette County Tribune and The Portage Daily Register (see above) shows me walking behind Travis Daniels in his wheelchair. I carried a sign with the words, “Offer Them Christ,” the title of my first sermon in the new sanctuary that day, and the theme of a new painting that was to hang in the church library.

What a powerful feeling it was to carry the names of all those saints, and all that sacred history. The choir, in their robes, led us in singing hymns as we marched up east Montello Street and around the corner, up State HWY 22 past Steinhaus Funeral Home (now the Crawford Funeral Home), to our new church home on Fern Drive.

“We were singing “Amazing Grace” as the new church building came into view. The words of that last verse are forever seared in memory:

When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.

The Marquette County Tribune reported that 253 souls packed the new sanctuary on that first Sunday.

Mary Reiche directed the choir, accompanied by Florence Scheiber and Phyllis Turner on organ and piano. Bunny Paul and Bill Dow sang solos.

I asked Esther Galbraith, one of the saints, whose famous church rummage sales helped to raise thousands of dollars for missions, to say a dedication prayer. I don’t remember exactly what she prayed, but there was hardly a dry eye in the place. When Esther said amen, we all knew we were home.

The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives.” Email him.