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When I visited St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, 804 W. Vliet St., a decade ago, things were not good.
Sure, the Herman Schnetzky-designed 1889 church (likely in collaboration with his future partner and then-draftsman and foreman Eugene Liebert) – a hilltop Gothic gem on the edge of Downtown – was still beautiful, but riven by conflict, the congregation had about three members, no pastor and no services.
As the St. John’s congregation, founded in 1848, reached its 175th birthday two weeks ago, it seemed like an opportune time for a revisit, and I’m glad I went back as the contrasts were clear.
When first I visited early in 2014, the church was locked up tight. This time, I didn’t even have to step inside to see a welcome – and welcoming – change.
One of the hulking wooden doors was slightly ajar, clearly unlocked. Just in front of it on the sidewalk, a bright sign declared, “St. John’s on the Hillside Lutheran Church ... Welcome! Come on in!”
Inside, the lights were on and down in front, just before the altar, seated at a small table with his laptop was the pastor, Rev. Isaac Hayes, who greeted me with a smile and a “can you dig it?” (He could clearly sense I’m a big fan of the singer, songwriter and pianist whose name he shares.)
Hayes, who arrived in 2021 straight from the seminary, says he can be found here most days.
“I try to be available to people during the week as much as I can,” Hayes says. “When I got here the first time and looked at those doors, I thought, ‘that looks locked, it looks closed, and I don't know if I want to open it,’ and so I can't imagine what other people might think, especially kids in the neighborhood.”
Hayes’ office is next door in the former parsonage, but, he says, he rarely uses it.
“You’ve got to go upstairs and then go knock on a scary door, and then maybe someone will come down and you might get kidnapped (laughs). I don't want people to feel intimidated to get to my office. So I'll open those doors up, I'll put the sign out there and I'll either work right outside the entryway, but since it’s winter time, I'll work inside the church.
“Since I've been doing that, I can't tell you how many people have walked in – tourists, neighbors just passing by – and they’re like, ’whoa, I thought this church was closed.’ It’s not a museum and it’s not a church that’s closed. We’re still living. They walk in for the first time and they're like little kids, and it's just really cool to see that and say, ‘this is your church, too’.”
Hayes says that actual kids will sometimes stick their heads in the door, too.
“My favorite part of having those doors open and working here is when kids come by. Maybe one will peek in, kind of give a little giggle and then run away, and then bring back a brother and sister,” he says. “And they say, ‘can we come in?’ They'll come in and they'll kind of run down the aisle and look through the colors of the stained glass windows. And then they'll book it out. Maybe a half hour later they'll come back with four cousins and friends and stuff.
“So just from having the doors open and just working here, I've talked to a number of different people, and people have gotten familiar with church and people have visited just from those kind of interactions.”
The church also began doing twice-monthly food pantry events, which has brought the neighborhood inside, too. Last weekend, the annual children’s Christmas event took place, too. That began in 2019 and in 2020 had 75 people. In 2021 there were 200.
Hayes often walks the neighborhood, talking to residents and he attends the community meetings at the nearby Hillside Family Resource Center.
A number of weddings in the church also helped to bring people in and even led to a few new church members.
It’s a big step forward for a congregation that in 2014 told me, that in the past, church leadership didn’t embrace its changing neighborhood as the old German immigrant families that started the church moved away or died off.
So, when those parishioners left, no one came to take their seats in the pews. It was a transition that had begun more than a half-century ago.
The neighborhood was largely bulldozed and replaced in 1950 with Hillside Terrace, which was, notes the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, “the country’s first postwar low-rent public housing and the first public housing built in Milwaukee with federal funds.”
The church ended its German-language services by 1985 and three years later St. John’s had about 80 members. By 1990, that shrank by another 10 percent, and the decline continued.
If the congregation and its building were to survive, trustee Paul Demcak told me in 2014, that would have to change.
"I would hope that in the future we can have a presence here that shows we are not afraid to rub elbows and be here and get to know our neighbors,” Demcak said. “This is a very historically important church but we don’t want it to be a museum."
That presence at the moment is Isaac Hayes, and the church has even added the Hillside name to its identity. But the shift began not long after my first visit, the pastor says.
For much of the remainder of the 2010s two consecutive semi-retired pastors at St. John’s worked hard to begin the outreach work and they were able to grow the congregation of three to about 25.
After a few years of temporary pastors sharing the load, the congregation asked for a seminary graduate and that’s how Hayes – who is from Arizona – arrived. He says the congregation is now up to about 40.
While 40 might not sound like a lot, it’s a meaningful number when you consider the struggles of many urban churches these days. Just about a mile east, another historic congregation ceased to exist at Summerfield United Methodist Church earlier this year.
Fortunately, an endowment created many years ago has helped the small St. John’s congregation keep its 135-year-old building in good shape.
To the naked eye, not much is different than when I first visited 10 years ago.
Since 1909, the sanctuary has been lit by rows of theater-style light bulbs, which a few years ago were replaced with LED bulbs of the same shape.
An exterior masonry issue earlier this year was quickly fixed for the safety of passersby and to prevent further damage to the church’s facade.
Next up, says Hayes, is roof work, for which some preliminary planning has begun.
Most noticeable inside are some areas of missing plaster on a side wall of the altar that I mistake for water damage. But when Hayes walks me over for a closer look, he says it’s not actually damage at all.
“One of our congregation members was looking to do some fixing of the paint and repaint stuff, and as they were uncovering things, they uncovered some of the original designs,” he says, as we look at the painted motifs – presumably from 1889 – peeking through the patches of missing plaster.
“We said, ‘stop!’ And we haven't touched the wall since then, because we had some professionals come in and take a look. That's something we have to be careful about and think about.”
Though the current paint job, which is mostly plain but with some detail-work painted in gold, appeared to Hayes to be original when he started, the work has shown that it was something like the fifth coat.
“So,” he says, “it was cool to uncover that.”
Hayes said he believes that some financial resources are available from the synod, too, for building repairs. Thankfully, there’s also that endowment.
“The blessing is we're living off a lot of the generosity of our ancestors with endowment funds and whatnot,” he says. “And so the money is there.”
Can you dig it?
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
