A Living Sanctuary on Elmdale Avenue
Immanuel Lutheran Church stands on a quiet block in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood, halfway between the lake and the Andersonville commercial strip. From the sidewalk at 1500 West Elmdale Avenue, the building looks much like other early twentieth-century Lutheran churches in Chicago: a corner tower, a red-granite cross out front, and a stately brick and limestone structure. Step inside, however, and the congregation reveals itself as a community that has been asking big questions about welcome, justice, and the shape of the gospel for a very long time.
Founded in 1853 as the first Swedish Lutheran church in Chicago, Immanuel has been shaped by cholera, the Great Chicago Fire, racial turnover in its neighborhoods, the rise and fall of a city, and the long struggle over who is welcome at the communion table. The current congregation is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), part of the Metro Chicago Synod, and a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation since 1996. The community gathers for a single Sunday service at 10:30 AM, in English, with a strong musical tradition built around a 1976 Schantz pipe organ, a volunteer-and-professional choir, and a cantor trained at some of the country's most demanding conservatories.
Pastor Monte Johnson, who has served Immanuel since 2003, often describes the church as a living sanctuary of hope and grace, a phrase that doubles as the congregation's mission statement. The building may be old, but the community is busy: a playgroup for neighborhood children, one-to-one tutoring for students in grades one through eight, confirmation classes shared with two partner Lutheran churches, and a building that hosts Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Girl Scout troops, and a preschool in addition to its own ministries.
From Cholera to the Great Fire: The Early Years
Immanuel was not the first Lutheran church in Chicago, nor the first Scandinavian one, but it was the first specifically Swedish Lutheran congregation. Its story begins in 1848, when Norwegian and Swedish members of the Scandinavian Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago (today Lakeview Lutheran) divided along lines of language and theology. The Norwegian members built a new church at Erie and Franklin; the Swedish members kept the Superior Street building. Five years later, the Swedish congregation organized itself as an independent body with the help of Pastor Paul Andersen, a Beloit College graduate, and Pastor Tuve Hasselquist, who later became president of the Augustana Synod and of Augustana College.
A call went out to Sweden, and Pastor Erland Carlsson arrived to become Immanuel's first pastor in 1853, serving until 1875. Within a year of his installation, the 1854 cholera epidemic swept through Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods, killing at least a tenth of Immanuel's members. By the late 1860s, however, the congregation had grown past one thousand members, outgrowing the Superior Street church and its basement publishing house and school. A new, larger building was begun in 1869 at Sedgwick and Hobbie Streets, a structure with a 154-foot steeple.
That church was used only briefly. On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the building, along with the homes of nine-tenths of Immanuel's members. Carlsson persuaded the congregation to honor the debt for the lost building and to rebuild. Through fund-raising on both sides of the Atlantic, ten million dollars was raised, enough to begin work on a new church on the same Sedgwick site, a building almost identical to the one the fire had consumed. Carlsson retired as pastor in 1875, the same year the new church was dedicated. He had also served as president, or bishop, of the Augustana Synod and chaired the board of Augustana College. He died in 1893 and was buried in Graceland Cemetery.
Even in these earliest years, Immanuel's life extended well beyond the sanctuary walls. The congregation quickly started a parish day school, then a college and seminary. Augustana College and Seminary officially opened in 1860 with 21 students and 2 professors; it moved to Paxton, then to Rock Island, and eventually merged with four other schools to form the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in 1962. Immanuel also joined other Swedish congregations in founding Augustana Hospital in 1881, a six-story, 150-bed facility in Lincoln Park with a nursing training program. The hospital later merged with Lutheran General Hospital, which today is part of Advocate Health Care. Over the years Immanuel also gave Chicago a short-lived newspaper, residences for working women, a life insurance society, a home for orphaned children (a forerunner of Lutheran Social Services of Illinois), a publishing house that fed into the lineage of Augsburg Fortress Press, and a long list of musical groups and mission societies.
Mother of Churches: The Middle Years
For most of the nineteenth century, Immanuel's biggest problem was growth. Thousands of Swedes poured into Chicago, making it the third-largest Swedish city in the world. Existing buildings, designed for hundreds, were bursting with thousands. To meet the need, Immanuel did what many energetic city congregations of the era did: it spun off new ones. The first was Salem Lutheran on the south side in 1868, just fifteen years after Immanuel's founding. Two years later, Immanuel moved to its new Sedgwick Street home and gave its old building to First Gethsemane Lutheran.
By 1905, the Augustana Synod had taken over the work of planting new mission congregations, but Immanuel had already given rise to a long list of daughter churches: Zion (1881), Trinity (1883), Saron (1888), Ebenezer (1892), Emaus (1895), Messiah (1896), Concordia (1898), Nebo (1901), Lebanon (1904), and Irving Park (1905). Their combined membership was well in excess of ten thousand. Two additional congregations took a different path. Bethel Lutheran was established in 1911 in Edgewater, and when Immanuel itself eventually relocated to Elmdale Avenue, the Bethel chapel rejoined its mother church. At the same time, Central Lutheran was organized to serve the near north side and took over the Sedgwick sanctuary. In more recent years, Immanuel has also helped give rise to the Chinese Christian Church and St. Elias Arabic Church.
Not every departure was a friendly one. In the 1870s, a large group of Swedish Lutherans began protesting what they saw as moral laxness, uncertain theology, and a lack of personal piety in the Augustana Synod. By 1884 the disagreement had hardened into schism, producing two new denominations, the Evangelical Covenant Church and the Evangelical Free Church. Between 1869 and 1884, nearly one thousand Immanuel members left to join the Covenant movement, founding at least three Covenant congregations in the process.
When Carlsson stepped down in 1875, the congregation called a 26-year-old recent Swedish immigrant, Dr. Carl Evald, who would shape Immanuel for almost thirty-five years, together with his wife Emmy. Evald inherited a brand-new building and a crushing debt, which the prosperous congregation retired within twenty years. The hallmark of his tenure was the expansion of ministry groups, almost all of them grounded in Bible study and Christian service rather than secular programming. The Sunday School at one point enrolled more than 1,500 students and served as an important vehicle for teaching English. Well over a dozen other groups, from sewing circles to missionary and tract societies, made Immanuel a constant center of community activity.
Emmy Evald, daughter of Pastor Carlsson, was a full partner in the leadership of Immanuel. She advocated for women's rights before the state legislature and a Congressional committee, played a significant role in the 1893 World's Fair, and founded the national Augustana Women's Missionary Society. She was instrumental in establishing hospitals for women in India and China and at least two residences for working women in Chicago. During the Evald era, Immanuel's active membership reached about two thousand, even as daughter congregations multiplied around the city.
From Near North to Edgewater: Into the Current Years
Like its members, Immanuel moved. Born in the area just north of the Chicago River, the congregation had relocated to the Near North Side in 1869, when that neighborhood was a center of Scandinavian homes and businesses. By the end of the century, however, the Norwegians and Swedes had largely moved on, and the Near North was becoming an Italian and Roman Catholic community. As early as 1907, Immanuel's leaders and the Augustana Synod began planning for a congregation in the far north of the city, near what is now Senn High School. The result was Bethel Chapel, which, despite several short-term pastors and a membership that never topped 150, attracted many Immanuel members simply because it was closer to their homes.
Merger talks between Immanuel and Bethel began in 1912, but it was not until 1918 that the two congregations formally joined and began planning a large new edifice about four blocks northwest of Bethel. Construction started in 1921 at 1500 Elmdale Avenue and was completed the following year. The structure included a parish hall and parsonage, but no permanent worship space: the first floor of the parish hall, today's Founders Hall, served as sanctuary for more than thirty years. A second-floor gymnasium housed Sunday School and other activities, and the tower included both an apartment and, at one point, the transmission center for a radio station. An underground spring made a basement impossible.
The main reason for the move was proximity to members' homes. A secondary reason was a sense that the old neighborhood had become unsafe. Even the move to more affluent Edgewater, however, was no guarantee of safety. Edgewater, Rogers Park, and Uptown were wealthy and socially vibrant in the 1920s and 1930s. After World War II, decline set in, sometimes precipitously. Edgewater fared better than its neighbors, but poverty, hunger, and inadequate housing became major issues. The flight of more affluent families to the suburbs made the problems worse, until energetic efforts by community members and neighborhood organizations reversed the decline and Edgewater emerged as a highly desirable part of the city while keeping its strong diversity.
Immanuel's response to these shifts has always been wide-ranging. The church has sponsored athletic events, scouting programs, musical organizations, and social groups. The Edgewater Tutoring Program, founded by Sally Grenz, provides one-on-one academic help and mentoring relationships to neighborhood children. The Immanuel Together Program, created by parish nurse Michelle Knapp, supports young children and their caregivers. Both programs continue to grow. In the 1980s and 1990s, under Pastor Carl McKenzie and youth director Ken Duckmann, Immanuel became a center of innovative youth ministry for the north side, running a volunteer-staffed program that included retreats, Bible studies, and a stress-management class, and helping to launch a cooperative Lutheran youth ministry that at one time involved fifteen churches.
The Edgewater neighborhood has long encouraged cooperation among religious bodies. The Edgewater Community Religious Association helped form Care for Real, the neighborhood food pantry. Immanuel's close ties to St. Gertrude Catholic Parish and Temple Emanuel have also been a source of mutual enrichment among the three congregations. The church's current partnerships include Care for Real, One Northside, the Family Teaching Christian Nursery School (FTCNS), Lutheran World Relief, and the ELCA, along with the Girl Scouts, Alcoholics Anonymous, and a J Lindsay Brown program.
A Reconciling in Christ Congregation
In 1996, Immanuel became a Reconciling in Christ (RIC) congregation. The RIC program began in 1984 through Lutherans Concerned/North America to recognize Lutheran congregations that intentionally welcome LGBTQIA+ believers. The community's welcome statement, repeated in multiple forms across the church's materials, makes the commitment explicit: Immanuel welcomes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual persons into the fellowship and to the Eucharistic table with true equality and affirmation, and at all levels of congregational life. The congregation also confesses the sin of racism, condemns the ideology of white supremacy, and commits itself to racial justice and peace.
The ELCA itself, as the national expression of the church, recognized committed same-sex relationships and welcomed practicing LGBTQIA+ clergy at its 2009 Churchwide Assembly. Immanuel's welcome extends further: no matter where someone comes from, no matter their age, race, socio-economic or family or immigration status, no matter their gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation, the church's teaching holds, they are welcome here. The RIC designation is not a side note; it shapes the liturgy, the preaching, the public witness, and the way newcomers are greeted at the door.
Worship at Immanuel
Worship is at the heart of Immanuel's life. The congregation gathers for a single Sunday service at 10:30 AM Central Time, with Holy Communion celebrated as part of the liturgy. The service is livestreamed on YouTube, and recordings of past services are available on the church's YouTube channel. The Order of Worship, or worship folder, and a bulletin insert are posted in advance so that those at home can follow along.
The liturgical forms practiced at Immanuel can be traced back to ancient Christian rites and rituals. The liturgy gathers the assembly by the Holy Spirit to confess human brokenness, wash in the healing waters of baptism, listen to stories from scripture, hear the Gospel of salvation, share a simple meal of bread and wine at the table of grace, and then be sent into the world to share God's love with neighbors. The rhythms of the church year encircle the community into the whole story of God's creation and God's redeeming gift of life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The name Immanuel itself is a sermon: in Hebrew, it means God with us. The church's own reflection on its worship puts it this way: Here are Word, water, and table. Here is God's message from generation to generation. Here is the invitation to go deeper in holy communion with God. Here is the intimacy of God's love that makes us all part of each other. Immanuel is, in its own description, a singing church, one that uses Lutheranism's rich liturgical heritage both in speaking and singing the story of God's redeeming love.
Music in Worship: The Schantz Organ and the Immanuel Choir
For centuries the pipe organ has been particularly suited to leading the liturgical song of God's people, and at Immanuel, the instrument is a 1976 Schantz Organ built by the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio. Designed in the Neo-Classical style, the organ has three manuals and a Pedal division, with the Great, Positiv, and Pedal organs exposed and the Swell enclosed under expression in a Swell box on the left side of the balcony. The exposed Trompette-en-Chamade and the turning Cymbelstern star are part of the balcony display.
The Schantz organ has 46 ranks of pipes plus 8 extensions and 1 half rank, totaling 2,663 pipes. Pipes range in size from the smallest, the size of a lead pencil, to the longest, eighteen feet tall. The console features English draw knobs, 45 thumb pistons, 21 toe pistons, and 24 couplers, with a combination action of 100 memory levels. The instrument is versatile enough to support a broad solo repertoire and to accompany robust congregational singing and the work of the Immanuel Choir.
The core musical instrument at Immanuel, however, is the voice of the assembly. The Immanuel Choir assists the cantor in leading the assembly in song. It is composed of both volunteers and professionals from a wide range of musical backgrounds, and its repertoire draws from plainsong to the twenty-first century. The choir rehearses every Sunday morning at 9:00 AM in the choir room on the lower level and leads worship at the 10:30 AM service from early September through late May or early June.
Cantor Ricardo Ramirez directs the music program. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Southern Methodist University, and the Eastman School of Music, he is a past Dean of the Chicago Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and has served as Organist for Barrington First Methodist Church and Director of Music and Organist at the Cathedral of the Holy Name in Chicago. He is a prolific composer whose works include the oratorio Huei tlamahuicoltica (The Great Event), which premiered on the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 2008 and weaves together English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. In addition to the pipe organ, Immanuel's music ministry makes use of piano, handbells, brass, percussion, and a variety of wind instruments, and the congregation sings both written hymnody and paperless music drawn from oral traditions around the world.
A stained-glass window of J.S. Bach overlooks the organ loft, a reminder of the organ's theological weight. The composer and organist Olivier Messiaen wrote of stained glass and pipe organ in words the church quotes: The stained-glass windows magnify the light, one of God's first creations; but the organ brings to the church something similar to light that yet surpasses it: the music of the invisible. It is the wondrous overture to the Beyond.
Sunday Mornings for Children
Children are a visible and central part of life at Immanuel. The Nursery welcomes children under four and is staffed by caring adults each Sunday from September to May, beginning at 9:40 AM and continuing through the worship service and coffee hour afterward. The Nursery is located upstairs near the gym, and electronic pagers are available to parents and caregivers in case of emergency. The Nursery attendant, Rebecca Halla, came to the work with more than a decade of experience caring for children, including those with special needs.
Sunday School at Immanuel uses the Godly Play curriculum, a Montessori-based approach that invites children into a few simple words, simple images, and deep quiet. Children sit in a circle, listen, imagine, wonder, and play, and are invited to meet their Creator and Redeemer in God's own story. The program describes itself as helping children find themselves in God's story and become God's story. Parents looking for the current schedule are encouraged to contact the church office.
Throughout the year, Immanuel also hosts The Forum, a series of presentations from church and community leaders on a wide range of topics. The Forum is open to anyone interested in adult learning and conversation beyond the Sunday sermon.
Pastor Monte Johnson and the Pastoral Team
Senior Pastor Rev. Montgomery (Monte) Johnson has served Immanuel since 2003 and was called to the congregation in June of that year. He earned a B.A. from St. Olaf College in 1985 and, in 1993, master's degrees from the University of Chicago Divinity School and the School of Social Service Administration. His Lutheran year, including Clinical Pastoral Education, field work, and a full-year internship, was administered through the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Immanuel is the third Metro Chicago congregation he has served since being ordained in 1993. He was remarried in 2004 and lives in Evanston with his wife, Kari, their daughter Leah, and Mehari, who came to the United States as a refugee from Eritrea and joined the family in 2019. Three older sons, Russell, Joe, and Sam, live in Chicago.
Jordan Collins-Brown, also known as JCB or Mr. Everything, serves as Minister for Youth and Households for both Immanuel and Ebenezer Lutheran Churches. A student at Wartburg Seminary pursuing an MDiv, he is in the Entrance portion of the Candidacy track for Word and Sacrament in the ELCA. The work of the youth and family ministries is shaped in part by his involvement since 2016 with Edgewater Congregations Together (ECT).
Cantor Ricardo Ramirez leads the music program. The Office Manager is Julia Reineck Steiner, a soprano section leader in the choir from 2016 to 2021 with degrees in vocal performance and political science from Lawrence University and a master's in voice from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Youth and Family: Playgroup, Tutoring, Confirmation, ECT
Immanuel's youth and family ministries embody the church's sense of itself as a living sanctuary, a place where doors are open for young people. The Immanuel Together Program, or Playgroup, has been part of the Immanuel community for thirty-five years. It meets in the Olin Center (the church basement) at 10:30 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and most attendees are currently between infancy and four years of age, though all ages are welcome. A small suggested donation helps pay honorariums to playgroup leaders and supplies, and scholarships are always available. Parents describe the program as a blessing: a safe place to learn songs and socialize, a resource that parents return to with younger siblings, and, in one parent's words, a place where her child, who has special needs, has grown by leaps and bounds.
Edgewater Tutoring serves students in grades one through eight and meets from 6:30 to 8:00 PM on Mondays and Tuesdays. The program is a safe learning environment where Edgewater students receive individual help from Immanuel members and church neighbors. It also employs Loyola University work-study students and welcomes volunteer tutors from across the neighborhood. Tutors and students are paired one-to-one, and the relationships often extend beyond the academic into mentoring.
Confirmation at Immanuel is a two-year program for seventh and eighth graders, shared by Ebenezer, Unity, and Immanuel Lutheran Churches. The students are combined in a single class taught by the pastors from each congregation. The curriculum alternates between a year of Bible study and a year focused on Lutheran theology. Confirmands participate in special projects, lead a shared Ascension Day service that brings all three congregations together, take part in Metro Chicago Synod youth activities, and attend a retreat at Lutherdale Bible Camp in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. They are also encouraged to take part in the shared youth group, which includes an annual service trip and, every three years, attendance at the ELCA National Youth Gathering. Classes typically meet twice a month on the first and third Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:00 PM at Ebenezer Lutheran Church (1650 W. Foster Ave.).
ECT Youth is open to students in seventh through twelfth grade and meets on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 6:30 PM during the school year. Activities are designed to build teamwork, self-esteem, support for family-life transitions, and adjustment to the high school experience.
Adult Ministries: On the Way, Women of Spirit, and the Men's Group
Adult formation at Immanuel is shaped by a process called On the Way, a four-step path for welcoming new members and deepening the faith of those already here. Inquire is a relaxed time of sharing stories of life and faith. Explore is a study of the Christian life in the Lutheran tradition, joined by a sponsor from the congregation. Prepare deepens understanding of Baptism and the Eucharist, looking back at how God has been active and looking forward to Baptism for the unbaptized or reaffirmation for those already baptized. Discover recognizes the gifts God has given and explores how to use them in service to God and to others. For those not baptized, the process is initiation. For the baptized, it is a way to deepen faith and strengthen ministry.
The Women of Spirit is Immanuel's women's ministry, and all women are invited to take part. The group is committed to growing in faith, affirming one another's gifts, and supporting one another in their callings. Past activities have included making holiday care baskets for shut-in members, making palm crosses for Palm Sunday, planning meals for special occasions, assembling school supply kits and quilts for Lutheran World Relief, supporting the church in special projects, hosting book clubs, and running service projects.
The Men's Group meets every other Saturday at 10:00 AM for breakfast, prayer, and fellowship at Hearts and Flour Café, 6130 North Ravenswood Avenue.
Prayer Ministries
Prayer is described at Immanuel as essential to being a Christian and capable of taking many forms and places. Centering Prayer resources are available to support a contemplative prayer practice, and a separate set of Encouragement Prayers is offered to those who want to pray for others. A prayer request form allows members and friends to share concerns with a pastor or with the wider Immanuel community.
Getting to Immanuel
Immanuel is located at 1500 West Elmdale Avenue in Chicago, Illinois 60660, in the Edgewater neighborhood. The #22 Clark bus stops one block to the west, the Metra UP-N Peterson station is three blocks to the east, and the Thorndale Red Line station is a ten-minute walk to the east. There is unrestricted street parking on Elmdale, Norwood, and Thorndale Avenues, and an accessible drop-off location sits directly in front of the church entrance on Elmdale Avenue. The church is wheelchair accessible.
Contact and Giving
The church office can be reached at 773-743-1820 (phone), 773-743-1849 (fax), or churchonelmdale@gmail.com. The office manager, Julia, can also be reached at the same email for questions about building use. Online giving is available through a secure portal linked from the church's home page. Sunday worship is livestreamed on YouTube, and past services are archived on the church's YouTube channel. Pastor Monte can be reached at pastormonte@immanuelchicago.org, and Cantor Ramirez at cantor@immanuelchicago.org.
From the Swedish cholera year of 1854 to today's affirming, justice-shaped community on Elmdale Avenue, Immanuel Lutheran Church has stayed close to its core conviction: that grace is for everyone, or it isn't grace. The congregation is, in its own words, a living sanctuary of hope and grace, rooted in the worship of the risen Christ, open at the table, in the choir loft, in the nursery, in the tutoring room, and on the sidewalk, to anyone who comes.