Zion Church / Zion Church

Organized on July 3, 1854, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church was the first German Protestant congregation in Mount Clemens. Its founding trustees were John Rossow and Abraham Devantier from Prussia, John William Miller and Carsten Roecker from Hanover, and John Charles Reimold and John George Murthum from Wuerttemberg. Zion Church operated as a free congregation, welcoming all Christians. It served primarily German-speaking Catholic and Protestant immigrants, including Lutherans, Calvinists and Huguenots. Worshipping at first in the Macomb County Courthouse, the congregation purchased this site, the former Methodist Academy, in 1862. The nave of the present brick sanctuary was built by Minard Barr in 1880. The tower and transepts were added in 1895. The itinerant ministers who served Zion Church in its formative years were Methodist, Lutheran, and Evangelical. The first resident pastor was the Reverend William Kies (1862-1864). He was followed by the Reverend Hermann Gundert (1864-1903), who contributed four thousand dollars of his own money to help fund the tower and transepts of the present church building. It was not until the 1920s, during the pastorate of the Reverend F. A. Roese (1903-1926), that English became the language of the worship service and of church records. In the early twentieth century, the congregation turned to humanitarian work. Led by the Reverend Jacob Wulfmann (1927-1949), the congregation helped support the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital and the Evangelical Home for Children and Aged in Detroit. In 1961 the church received its present name, Zion United Church of Christ.