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

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Above: Pastor Thompson sported a
western hat and duds while delivering
his message at Fiesta Texas,
November 10, 1996.
Below: Pat and Pastor Thompson greet
Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck during
festivities at Fiesta Texas culminating
the Share His Love campaign.
‘Don’t you think we should have a Lutheran
High School?’ and the third was “Don’t you
think we should move Concordia?’ All of those
came to pass and were a big part of what took
place over the next four years.”
Serious discussions about purchasing a new
location for Concordia began shortly thereafter.
Thompson recalls: “Some time during the
summer of 1994 David Seale came to me and
said, ‘I’ve got a piece of property that I’ve got a
handshake on.’”
He was aware that Seale had been authorized
by the Church Council to keep his eyes open for
potential sites for the church to purchase. Seale,
a commercial broker and developer, had begun
thinking about sites for the church as early as
1990, when Dr. Merkens was considering opening
Concordia North.
“In 1993 I saw a great opportunity on a great
piece of property coming on the market,” Seale
said. “This was the Rogers Ranch property that
was located north and partially south of Loop
1604, near where the Huebner Road overpass
was to be built. The entire tract of 700 acres was
owned by the Rogers Trust for the Arts.”
Seale and his partners attempted to buy the
tract for development, reserving a corner for
Concordia, but the group was unsuccessful. The
eventual purchaser, however, needed a follow-up
contract in order to secure his financing. Seale
began negotiations with the purchaser in early
1994 on the 50 acres at the north west corner of
1604 and the soon to be built Huebner Road.
“So we had the call committee going on at the
same time I was trying to buy a piece of property,
and we hadn’t gotten a pastor yet,” Seale said. “It
was kind of funny how God made all these things
kind of dovetail together. God placed me in the
middle of all of this activity, and it was spectacular
to see the way that God moved things.
“I really strung out the negotiations because,
first of all, we needed to get a new senior pastor
on board, and, second, we needed to make sure
that his vision and our vision were the same.”
On December 6, 1994 Concordia’s church
council elected to put the process of moving into
motion by approving a non-binding letter of agreement
to purchase the property on Loop 1604.
This approval was really a green flag for Seale
to continue the ongoing negotiations with the
group offering the property for sale. It took
nearly another year, until November 5, 1995,
before the purchase agreement was finalized and
accepted by the congregation.
“One problem was that the market was coming
back and the group we were negotiating with
was having second thoughts about the sale,”
Seale said. “In fact, nothing could have made
those people close the deal except for God’s
guidance and the airtight agreement we had.”
On November 5 the voters of Concordia, in
the largest voters’ assembly ever held by the
congregation, elected to purchase the land and
to build a new Concordia campus. At this meeting
the voters not only approved the formal con-
54 ✦ THE CONCORDIA STORY