A Cathedral on Twenty-Fifth Street
Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral sits on a generous nine-acre site in the southern, growing part of Fargo, North Dakota, a low, light-filled building shaped in what its architects called Prairie Gothic. It is the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of North Dakota, the place where the diocesan bishop has his cathedra, or seat, and the home of a congregation whose roots reach back to the first Episcopal service held in Fargo on August 29, 1872.
Through liturgy, music, preaching, outreach, art, and architecture, Gethsemane is a place, in the words of the congregation itself, to refresh the soul and be formed as a follower of Jesus. Members describe themselves as part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, tracing their heritage to the beginning of Christianity, and they aim, through word and deed, to love their neighbors as themselves and respect the dignity of every person. Anyone is welcome at any service, wherever they happen to be on their journey of faith.
Sunday at Gethsemane: Two Eucharists, One Family
Sunday at Gethsemane unfolds around two principal Eucharists, with formation and fellowship woven between them. The day opens at 8:30 a.m. with Holy Eucharist Rite I, celebrated in the main church using the more traditional language of the Book of Common Prayer. Rite I draws those who like a quieter, more contemplative rhythm to the start of the day.
At 9:30 a.m., the focus shifts to the Great Hall, where coffee is poured, conversation hums, and children and adults gather for Sunday School and Christian Formation. Faith Formation is the church's ministry of teaching and discovery, growing hearts, minds, and spirits in Christ through the deliberate, conscious work of hearing the Word of God. Classes for children run alongside adult offerings so that families can learn together between the services.
At 10:30 a.m., the congregation reassembles in the main church for Holy Eucharist Rite II, the principal Sunday liturgy of the day. Rite II uses contemporary Prayer Book language, and the service includes a Children's Sermon aimed at the younger members of the assembly. Music is led by the Cathedral Choir, with younger voices joining when the Youth Choir sings, and congregational hymnody carrying the liturgy forward.
Wednesday Midday in the Chapel of the Resurrection
For those whose week keeps them away on Sundays, Gethsemane offers a brief Midweek Eucharist each Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. in the Chapel of the Resurrection, a smaller space adjoining the nave that seats roughly forty people. The service is intentionally short, a midday pause for prayer and the Eucharist in the middle of the workweek, and it draws both regulars and visitors who slip in from nearby offices and the hospital corridors a short drive away.
The chapel is more than a weekday worship space. It serves as a place for quiet meditation and houses a columbarium for the interment of ashes, so the parish family remembers its members at the very heart of the cathedral building. Several furnishings in it come from the older cathedral that stood on Ninth Street South, carrying the congregation's history into the present.
Music That Fills the Nave
Music is central to life at Gethsemane. The Cathedral Choir, directed since 2020 by Dr. Kira Haler-Knutson, sings at the principal liturgies and for special services through the church year, including the Advent and Christmas tradition of Lessons and Carols and the choral offering of Anglican Evensong. Dr. Haler-Knutson holds degrees from St. Olaf College, Boston University, and the University of Minnesota, has taught at Harvard, Macalester, and Concordia, and sings professionally as a soprano with Border CrosSing and other ensembles in the Twin Cities.
Alongside the adult choir, SpiritSong offers a different sound. Coordinated since 1999 by Julie Garden-Robinson, SpiritSong is the cathedral's contemporary music group, drawing together teens through adults who lead worship at the 10:30 Rite II and at special services with newer songs and a more informal style. A Youth Choir also sings at select liturgies, giving younger singers a place in the music program and a path toward the Cathedral Choir as they grow.
For the congregation, the choirs are not merely performers but leaders of congregational song. The hymnal opens onto the great feasts of the liturgical year, and musicians rehearse the music that carries the assembly through Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and the long green seasons of ordinary time. As the clergy note, hymns get inside people and live there long after they stop singing.
From Tents to Sandstone: A History That Grew Up with Fargo
Gethsemane Cathedral and the city of Fargo grew up together. In September of 1871, the Northern Pacific railroad announced its intention to cross the Red River at the site where Moorhead and Fargo now stand. Within a month, two tent communities had sprung up on the prairie, Fargo on the Prairie and Fargo in the Timber. The first Episcopal service in Fargo came less than a year later, on August 29, 1872, with the Reverend Joseph A. Gilfilian, rector from Brainerd, presiding over a congregation made up mostly of railroad workers and their wives.
Services in summer were tolerable; in North Dakota winters, they were not. In 1873, the Episcopalians moved into Pinkham's Hall at the corner of Front (Main) and Third Street and worshipped there under the informal name The Church of the Crossing, a mission church with twenty to twenty-five regular attendees. B. F. Mackall, a young druggist from Moorhead, became an important lay leader, raising money to build a proper church and leading prayer services whenever a priest was unavailable.
By the summer of 1874, the congregation had raised enough to break ground for a permanent church, which was completed the next year and named Christ Church. The land at 204 Ninth Street South was donated by General George W. Cass, the same Cass for whom Cass County is named. Within a few years the building had been blown off its foundation, rebuilt, granted parish status, and renamed Gethsemane church. The booming agricultural economy of the 1880s pushed membership to 188 by 1881 and brought new features: a vested choir, stained glass windows, a bell tower, a pipe organ, and a vesting room.
In 1883, the missionary district of North Dakota was formed, and Fargo was chosen as its See City. The district's first bishop, W. D. Walker, began publishing the North Dakota Churchman in 1886 (renamed the North Dakota Sheaf in 1902) and in 1890 famously outfitted a Pullman railroad car as a traveling mission church. He called it the Church of the Advent, and it carried his ministry across the diocese for nearly a decade until the expense of maintaining it became impractical.
By the 1890s, the original building had again been blown off its foundation and was too small. Ambitious plans to build a new cathedral out of red sandstone were drawn up but had to be scaled back when a national economic depression hit. In the end, a new cathedral was built, but as a wood-frame structure on a sandstone foundation, with decorative wooden features carved to imitate the stone details of the gothic revival style originally envisioned. Some three hundred people attended the new cathedral's first service on February 11, 1900, though another thirteen years would pass before the building was debt-free and could be consecrated.
In 1980, the old Gethsemane Cathedral was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Then, on September 12, 1989, a construction fire burned it beyond repair. The congregation went through the classic stages of grief, disbelief, anger, bargaining, denial, and acceptance. The Very Rev. Frank H. Clark, dean from 1986 to 1997, and the parish chose to treat the loss as the loss of a loved one rather than rush to rebuild.
Three months after the fire, the congregation moved into a former business college, partitioning offices and classrooms to create a worship space for about three hundred people. The flat, windowless room was a stark contrast to the long nave and chancel of the old building. The discomfort, the clergy later wrote, was more than psychological. They learned how important it was to sense the difference between morning, noon, evening, and midnight, and to feel the seasons of the year, things they had previously taken for granted in the old building.
Out of the Ashes: The Present Cathedral
The cathedral members see today rose out of that experience. After a year of preparation, the parish began a series of four hands-on design workshops with the architects Charles Moore and Arthur Andersson of Austin, Texas, supported by Jim Burns of Take Part Urban Design and Planning of San Francisco. Each four-hour Sunday afternoon workshop drew eighty to ninety volunteers, who weighed in on everything from property layouts to the steeple.
Moore and Andersson led the congregation through models and small building components. Sprigs of parsley stood in for trees; Fruit Loops cereal represented people in the scale models. One parish concern, the entrance to the steeple, was resolved when a parishioner insisted on entering through the base of the bell tower, as in the old building, and the architects obliged. When the final scheme was brought back to the parish, it was accepted by consensus.
The local firm of Yeater Henning Ruff Shultz Rokke and Welch (YHR) translated the design into working drawings, and the parish itself chose the site, a nine-acre parcel in Fargo's growing southern section. Ground was broken on May 18, 1991.
The result is a postmodern building the architects describe as Prairie Gothic. The exterior is whitewashed board and batten in the tradition of prairie buildings, with Gothic proportions in the nave, a crossing in the roofline, false buttresses on the south facade, and standing-seam metal roofs accenting the buttresses and tower. Each side of the building has a different face. The south facade reads as Gothic; the north side, with its many roof lines, suggests a small prairie village.
The interior surprises. Colored concrete floors, sheet rock and concrete block walls, large fir timbers, and exposed trusses give a sense of warmth, while insulated skylights let light play through the whitewashed ceiling trusses of the nave and Great Hall. Two interior courtyards bring daylight to closed rooms, and stained glass in the nave throws color across the space as the day passes. The floor plan under the traditional cruciform roofline is more contemporary in feel: the principal worship space sits in the crossing, the leg of the cross becomes the Great Hall for fellowship, and movable glass doors can open the two into one.
The Great Hall adds seating for two hundred and fifty when the glass doors are open, on top of the three hundred and fifty seats in the nave itself, allowing the cathedral to host large funerals, concerts, and diocesan events without sacrificing the intimacy of ordinary Sunday worship. Many furnishings were salvaged from the fire, refinished, and put back into service: the altar and pulpit were rebuilt as free-standing pieces, the bishop's cathedra was kept, the relatively new butcher block pews were refinished and arranged in a modified radial pattern, and a new font bowl in clear view of the assembly is filled with continuously flowing water. The chancel has an accessible ramp and a removable altar rail at floor level, and the entire chancel is flexible. The architect's signature memory palaces live here, including one set of stained glass windows from the former cathedral, illumined to depict the Great Commission and the history of the congregation and the diocese.
The cathedral was paid off in January of 2003, just twelve years after groundbreaking. Long-time members and newcomers alike continue to expand the cathedral's ministries with their time, treasure, and talents. As the parish historian Dr. Gretchen Harvey writes, the church is historic, but it is always new.
Faith Formation at Every Age
Faith Formation is Gethsemane's ministry of teaching, instruction, and discovery. The congregation believes that hearing the Word of God requires deliberate, conscious, and ongoing thought and discernment, so the church offers a layered program for children, youth, and adults.
On the ground floor of that program is Sunday School, which meets during the 9:30 a.m. Christian Formation hour between the two Sunday Eucharists. Children gather in age-appropriate classes, and at the 10:30 service a Children's Sermon brings the gospel message to young hearts during the liturgy itself. The faith formation calendar also marks the Bible Gifting of pre-K and third graders, a tradition in which young members of the parish receive their own Bible.
For older students, NEXT Group gathers youth for faith and fellowship. There is a Youth Summer Mission Trip each year, and Vacation Bible School opens the doors to children from the wider community for Bible stories, music, crafts, and games.
Adults have several regular gathering points. Weekday Bible Study and Seeing the Word (a practice of prayerful attention to sacred images) meet during the week. A Women's Bible Study has long been a steady presence in the formation calendar, and Wednesday Night Faith Formation Groups offer additional small-group study and discussion. Confirmation preparation is offered for teens and adults who wish to be confirmed or received into the Episcopal Church, and seasonal programs move through Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and the great feasts of the liturgical year.
Confirmation typically comes from the diocesan bishop on his visitation. Visitors to the cathedral will see this work in motion in the youth director, Jodie Berg, who coordinates Cathedral Life, youth and family programming, and the wider fellowship of the parish.
Coffee Between Services and the Rhythm of the Year
Fellowship and hospitality are part of how Gethsemane lives as a church family. Coffee between the two Sunday services is a long-standing gathering in the Great Hall, and the rhythm of the year is marked by beloved parish traditions.
The Stewardship Brunch gathers the parish around the annual pledge campaign. Shrove Tuesday brings pancakes before the leaner days of Lent. The Greening of the Cathedral, and later the Plundering of the Greenery, decorate and then strip the church for the Christmas season. The Annual Meeting Brunch is the parish's working gathering of the year, with reports and elections. An Easter Egg Hunt brings families together in the spring, and Parent's Night Out gives parents a break while children play under cathedral supervision. A Fall Festival opens October with parish-wide celebration. Throughout the year, the cathedral hosts Outside Events in its sacred space, including musical performances and recitals that bring the wider community through its doors.
Tending the Wider Community
Spreading the Gospel and tending the Kingdom is how Gethsemane describes its work beyond the walls of the building. The parish supports and partners with a number of local and wider ministries.
Members prepare and serve Salvation Army Meals and partner with Churches United for the Homeless, two of the Fargo-Moorhead area's main direct-service efforts for people experiencing hunger and housing insecurity. Episcopal Relief and Development channels the cathedral's wider disaster relief and development giving into work around the world. Alcoholics Anonymous holds meetings in the cathedral's facilities, providing a quiet, accessible space for recovery in the heart of the city. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have long used the building and grounds, and the cathedral hosts Faith Communities Alive, a network that brings congregations together across Fargo-Moorhead.
Daughters of the King is a lay order of women devoted to prayer, service, and evangelism, and Eucharistic Visitors take the consecrated elements from the Sunday liturgy to those who cannot be present. The Healing Service is a quiet and prayerful complement to the regular Eucharists, with the laying on of hands and anointing for those seeking prayer for physical, emotional, or spiritual needs.
Pastoral Care in Life and in Death
Pastoral care at Gethsemane is described as an incarnation of love and hope, caring for one another during crisis and hardship as well as joy and celebration. The work is shared by the dean, the assisting deacon (currently Deacon Terry Overbo), the lay pastoral team, and the Daughters of the King, who hold the parish in daily prayer.
Weddings and funerals are among the most visible pastoral moments. Couples preparing for marriage at the cathedral follow a wedding guide that walks through the liturgy, music, flowers, photography, and rehearsal, and the parish offers preparation sessions with the dean. The funeral guide helps families plan a service of celebration and remembrance, with opportunities for family members to participate, music drawn from the parish repertoire, and burial or interment options including the columbarium in the Chapel of the Resurrection.
Baptisms are scheduled in the context of Sunday worship, so the welcome of a new Christian is shared with the whole assembly. Visitors preparing for a wedding, baptism, or funeral at the cathedral are invited to begin by contacting the parish office.
The People Who Lead and Care for the Cathedral
The cathedral is led by The Very Rev. Father Mark Strobel, the dean. Father Mark graduated from Jamestown College with degrees in music and religion, from Wartburg Theological Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, and from St. John's University School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he earned a degree in liturgical studies. He is a long-standing contributor to a preaching resource published by Liturgical Press, a regular writer for Give Us This Day, and has written for worship, preaching, and prayer resources published by Augsburg Fortress. He is a Benedictine Oblate of St. John's Abbey.
The assisting clergy includes Deacon Terry Overbo. The diocesan bishop, the Rt. Rev. Shay Craig, has his cathedra at Gethsemane and visits annually for confirmations and the reception of new members.
The music program is led by Dr. Kira Haler-Knutson, who joined as Cathedral Choir Director in 2020 and directs the choir alongside her work as a soprano with Border CrosSing and other ensembles. SpiritSong is coordinated by Julie Garden-Robinson, an NDSU professor and extension food and nutrition specialist who has led the contemporary music group since 1999.
Cathedral life and youth ministry are coordinated by Jodie Berg, who has worked in church settings since 2017 and oversees the wider fellowship of the parish, including publications, communications, and volunteer recruitment, alongside her work in youth and family programming. Rachel Floberg serves as Nursery Coordinator, caring for the youngest members during formation and worship.
Beliefs, Worship, and Welcome
Gethsemane is part of the Episcopal Church, a member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the cathedral traces its heritage to the beginning of Christianity. The congregation holds to the historic creeds and liturgies of the Anglican tradition, gathered in the Book of Common Prayer, and worships in the patterns of Word and Sacrament that have shaped Anglican Christians for centuries.
The mission of the church is, in the words of the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer, to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ. The cathedral's preaching centers on Jesus Christ as Messiah and Son of God, on the grace of God given in baptism, on the forgiveness of sins and the hope of resurrection, and on the practical call to forgive one another as we have been forgiven. Recent sermons have explored the meaning of forgiveness seventy-seven times over, the surprising welcome Jesus extends to those considered outcast, the way of the cross in ordinary daily life, and the foundation of the church on the rock of Christ, who builds and sustains it.
Worship is intentional and liturgical. The Sunday Rite I Eucharist uses traditional language and a quieter pace. The Sunday Rite II Eucharist uses contemporary Prayer Book language and includes congregational singing, a Children's Sermon, and a sermon from the dean. The Wednesday Midweek Eucharist offers a midday pause for prayer and communion in a smaller space.
There is room at the table for everyone. Anyone, the parish writes, is welcome at any scheduled service, and wherever a person finds themselves on the journey of faith, they are welcome at Gethsemane Cathedral.
Coming to Gethsemane
The cathedral is at 3600 25th Street South in Fargo. The main phone line is 701-232-3394, with a fax line at 701-232-3077. Sunday services are at 8:30 a.m. (Rite I) and 10:30 a.m. (Rite II), with Christian Formation and Coffee Hour in the Great Hall at 9:30 a.m. The Wednesday Midweek Eucharist is at 12:15 p.m. in the Chapel of the Resurrection.
Sermons from recent Sundays are posted online, and a calendar of upcoming services and special events, including the Bishop's annual Visitation, is available through the parish office and online. Giving to support the cathedral's ministry can be made through the cathedral's online giving platform. Visitors, newcomers, and those curious about weddings, funerals, baptisms, or any of the cathedral's programs are invited to come as they are.