Come to the table…..but call first
Pastor Schellhase was a strong old time German Lutheran pastor who let you know what he believed. There was a time when we had to preregister for communion. If you had intended to take communion, you had to call the church office by the Thursday before and announce your intent. If you did not get a call from the Pastor, you could commune. If you got a call from the Pastor, you would be informed when you would be able to commune.
In addition, for a number of years the annual total giving for each member was published. This was not too popular.
My wife, Winnie, and I got married at Martin Luther, on October 5, 1940. We bought a marriage license for $2.00 at the clerk of courts office. Pastor Schellhase was not too happy about this, as we could have saved the $2.00 if our wedding date was announced in our bulletin for the two weeks before. At our wedding, my mother wished for my sister, Ruth, to sing Ave Maria in the ceremony, but Pastor put a no-no to that! We all loved Pastor Schellhase very much.
I have one more story about the Pastor. One time Pastor and Mrs. Schellhase and my dad were driving to Columbus to Capitol University for a church meeting. Mrs. Schellhase had prepared some homemade jelly for their sons, Paul and Fred, who were students at Capitol. It was in the wintertime and the Pastor was driving when the car slid on the ice and went off the road into a ditch. My dad, in the back seat, rolled around and one of the lids on a jar of jelly came off and the jelly spilled on my dads’ baldhead and on his face. Pastor Schellhase saw him and shouted, “My God, John, you have been scalped!” He had not known my dad wore a toupe!
Gordon Mitchell
