165th Anniversary Celebration

On October 11th, 2009, East Koshkonong will celebrate Covenant Sunday, 9 a.m. On this weekend 165 years ago, the first members of EKLC covenanted together around “Four Points” drafted by J.W.C. Dietrichson, their first pastor. We celebrate this anniversary by gathering together and making a covenant ourselves, committing ourselves to continuing the ministry that has been passed on to us through these many generations. You are formally invited to attend Covenant Sunday. Mark Granquist, professor of church history from Luther Seminary, will be our guest speaker for the day. He specializes in American church history and Scandinavian-American religion. All are welcome to attend!

After worship, we will host our annual, and now famous, pie auction. Bring a pie to donate for the auction, or a couple of pies to share and eat. Ice cream will be provided. We’ll enjoy fellowship, pie and ice cream, while one of our local auctioneers auctions off pies as a benefit for the East Koshkonong Building Fund.


The “Four Points"

At a meeting on October 10th, 1844, J.W.C. Dietrichson established these “Four Points” as the basis for organizing forty families into a congregation in what became known as East Koshkonong. Three days later, thirty families at West Koshkonong formally accepted the “Four Points.”

By December 19, 1844, the West Koshkonong congregation had erected a log church. East Church erected an identical log church by January 31, 1845.

1. Do you desire to become a member of the Norwegian Lutheran congregation in this place?
2. Will you to that end subject yourself to the church order that the Ritual of the Church of Norway prescribes?
3. Will you promise that you shall not call or accept any other minister and pastor than such as can clearly establish according to the Norwegian Lutheran Church Order that he is a regularly called and rightly consecrated pastor? And will you show the pastor thus called by you and the congregation to spiritual rulership the attention and obedience that a member of a congregation owes his pastor in all things that he requires and does according to the Ritual of the Church of Norway?
4. Will you, by signing your name or by permitting it to be signed, here make acknowledgment that you have joined the congregation on the above-named conditions?