The Concordia Story: A Fifty-Year History of Concordia Lutheran Church 1951-2001

We tried to get everything done in our service in
sixty minutes. That meant the sermon needed to
be right at twenty-two minutes. This also helped
some of the older folks know that if they had to
get home and take the roast out of the oven, the
8:30 service was always going to be over at 9:30.
Eleven o’clock service was through at 12, communion
or not.”
Television was a natural medium to expand
the reach of Concordia. The first experiment
with television was called Lutheran TV Bible
School and was aired in 1952 and 1953, long
before most families even owned a television
receiver. But in 1963 Concordia went on the air
with TV Sunday School, a program that became
San Antonio’s top rated Sunday morning show.
“Of course that was in the days when there were
only three channels and there wasn’t a lot of competition
at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning,” Merkens
said. “Every week we took ten kids along for the
taping, and it was simply a Sunday School lesson,
which I delivered, directed at kids, but which also
had something for adults. A lot of people came to
Concordia as the result of that program.”
The program lasted through 1965.
Another example of a simple, effective idea
implemented by Merkens was to furnish identical
Bibles for use during Adult Bible Class.
“In that way, when we asked everybody to turn
to Ecclesiastes 2, no one would have to be embarrassed
about not being able to find that book in
the Old Testament. We’d just say, ‘Turn to page
242’ and everybody would be at the same place.”
Dozens of similar, seemingly insignificant,
techniques were employed to make worship at
Concordia as comfortable and as user friendly as
possible, while remaining Christ-centered and
Biblically-based.
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Above: The 1960-61 staff of
Concordia Lutheran School poses for
the camera. How many of these faces
can you identify? Several are still
members of Concordia.
Left: Concordia’s sanctuary is filled for
worship in 1964. Note the ladies’ hats,
high baffle walls behind the pulpit and
lecturn, and the lack of organ pipes,
which were added in the 1970’s.
Chapter II ✦ 21