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

CHAPTER 4
✦
Concordia School students regularly
participate in worship services. Here
Laura Simon leads a school group in
singing during the early 1990’s.
It quickly became clear to the people of
Concordia that there could not be a greater contrast
between personalities and style of any two
men of God, than between Guido Merkens and
William Thompson.
Merkens is tall; Thompson is short. Merkens
is traditional; Thompson is contemporary.
Merkens is athletic; Thompson is not. Both are
highly intellectual, but with different means of
expressing that aptitude. Merkens preaches from
the pulpit; Thompson roams the stage when he
preaches. While Merkens is imposing and outgoing,
Thompson is self-effacing and shy. Where
Merkens manages, Thompson delegates.
Thompson realized the challenge lying
before him.
“One of the things I was confident about was
that anyone who came in and attempted to
mimic Merkens would fail,” Thompson
observed. “No one could do Merkens like
Merkens could do Merkens.
“When I was considering the call, I knew
that, in this case, if you came, you had to come
believing you were called and, second, believing
you had to be who you were…and that God
would see you past that. By the nature of the differences
between the two of us, you knew there
were going to be changes.”
Early in his tenure, Thompson placed the congregation
on notice that change was in the offing.
“Dr. Merkens had had great success in growing
a church, and the things he did worked for
him and for Concordia. But the things that were
happening when I came to Concordia were basically
from the 70’s. To put it another way, even
though Concordia has always been known as an
innovative church, it had failed to incorporate
some of the recent innovations in worship that
were drawing people to other churches.”
Specifically, Thompson pointed to contemporary
Christian music, a variety of musical
instruments, dramatic presentations, multimedia,
and multiple opportunities for Bible study
and fellowship.
He quotes church growth researchers who
believe that the style of worship popular in the
1960’s through the 1980’s, centered around a
strong pastor, was simply not going to be effective
in the 1990’s and beyond.
“Churches were changing, just as grocery
stores had changed from the mom and pop
stores to the big mega-stores, like the one HEB
50 ✦ THE CONCORDIA STORY