St. Paul Thai Lutheran Church will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a festival service in a recently restored sanctuary featuring Thai classical dance and special music. Following the service, worshippers will move to the social hall and treated to a spectacular buffet of Thai food and shopping at a holiday market.
The Thais want to share their pride and sense of accomplishment with the entire community and therefore they invite everyone to share their joy by joining them at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Nov.16 at the church, located at the corner of Brown and Dixon.
A 40th anniversary is in itself a cause for celebration, but what will make this event an especially celebratory occasion is the journey the members have taken to get where they are today.
In 1985 a small group of Thais living in Chicago formed what was then called the Thai Community Church of Chicago and asked Rev. Pongsak Limthongviratn, who was working on a PhD at the time, to act as their weekend pastor.
They worshipped at a Japanese church near Wrigley Field for a few years and moved to Forest Park in 1992 where they rented space from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, the congregation that owned the white stucco church building with two steeples at 7416 Dixon.
What they told St. Paul’s members was that their plan was to rent for 5-10 years, save their money and purchase a building of their own. They even had a cardboard model of what that facility might look like.
At the time, St. Paul’s was the stronger congregation of the two, and the members liked the idea of helping another small church pursue its dream. As St. Paul’s became gradually weaker, the Thai congregation got stronger. About 15 years later, St. Paul’s members accepted the reality that, because of declining membership, the congregation before long would have to close, but as a last act of faithfulness to their sense of purpose, they, in effect, “wrote the Thais into their will.”
That in itself is a good story, but the fact that the Thais are not only still around but thriving is evidence that they beat the odds. The Rev. Dr. Pongsak, who is now president of the Bangkok Institute of Theology in Thailand, told me a few years ago that ethnic congregations usually don’t last more than 30 years.
New immigrants are highly motivated to support an organization that speaks their language, loves their food and shares a common culture. Their children, however, grow up in this country and therefore speak English as their first language, love pizza, have been assimilated into American culture and join churches that are more in tune with the culture in which they grew up.
The fact that this group is 10 years beyond that 30-year projection makes the Nov. 16 event even more a cause for thanksgiving.
What the Thai members are also grateful for is not just surviving but alive with energy, a sense of purpose and looking to the future with expectation. Leaning into the future, the congregation has invested almost $100,000 — painting, upgrading, replacing the old boiler, adding a full bathroom complete with a shower next to the classrooms in the basement — to restore the 126-year-old building to a “like-new” condition.
That kind of investment reveals that the congregation expects it just might be around for another 40 years.
Part of this spiritual vigor is a generational shift. Rev. Pongsak’s strong leadership kept the congregation on course for 30 years, but with many of the original members getting up in age, there was some anxiety about the future.
When he retired and moved back to Thailand, the created power vacuum in the church was quickly filled by younger Thais who spoke English well, were professionals, and who drove BMWs or family-size mini-vans. The mini-vans parked outside the church at 3 p.m., when worship begins, correlates with the number of small children in the congregation’s Sunday school.
Another way the Thai church has beaten the odds is the diversity of people at worship. Out of the 20-30 people in church on a typical Sunday, four will be Black and six will be white — one-third to one-half of those present.
While that DEI mix is an aspiration of most mainline churches, research reveals that when it comes to religion, birds of a feather tend to flock together.
You might say that this small group of religious folk is counter-cultural in many and pleasing ways.
To learn more about this ongoing successful immigration story, go to the congregation’s website, www.saintpaulthai.com.