1973

Pastor Walter Kortrey, pictured here, conducting services.

Bad winter weather reduced the average Sunday attendance to 93.

Here is from the October issue of The Scroll(1):

Pastor Walter Kortrey was officially installed as Pastor of Christ's Lutheran Church, September 23, 1973. Pastor Martin Heineken officiated. Pastor Heineken is a retired Professor of Systematic Theology at the Philadelphia Seminary.

was very aware of the great difficulties that had ensued at Christ's Lutheran Church in Woodstock. He set about healing the congregation with great attention to the wide variety of opinions held not only within the congregation, but also among the townspeople in general. The story of his pastorate is the story of a slow but certain involvement of the congregation with the pressing social needs of the town.

The congregation saved coupons to help purchase paint for the church exterior. The drive was called "Betty Crocker paints the church!"

Alcoholics Anonymous began having weekly meetings in the Fellowship Hall.

During this year, Pastor Kortrey married Barbara Bomar.

New members during the year included Mr. and Mrs. Garet Church, Mrs. Barbara (Bomar) Kortrey, and the Mark and Eleanor Anderson family.

Here is an excerpt from the May issue of The Scroll entitled "The Hymn-Sing Service"(3):

"Why don't we sing more of the good old hymns once in a while?" That's a question that keeps coming back to us from church memhers, young and old. So, on Sunday, May 13, the entire Service will be given over to hymn sing. The Worship and Music committee has selected over a dozen old favorites, some of them to be used as part of the liturgy. The sermon will NOT be sung, but it will have a musical theme. Don't miss the Hymn-Sing Service on Sunday, May 13.

The Metropolitan New York Synod approved our church council's resolution that the moneys received from the proposed sale of the Mount Tremper Lutheran Camp be devoted to youth activities.

The congregation started the "Christian Day Nursery School" and ran it in the Fellowship Hall.

Here is an excerpt from the unbound congregational records for a council meeting on December 11:

Bob Barrette reported for the Christian Education Committee that the first quarter started with 64 students and there is now an enrollment of 90 with an average of 70 in attendance.

The council decided to limit candles to the choir only for Christmas Eve services in the interest of safety.

The Pastor's compensation for this year (salary, benefits, etc.), not including parsonage expenses, was approximately $11,027.00 ($49,511 in 2006 dollars). The total church spending was $33,966 ($152,507). Total receipts for the year were $37,012 ($166,184).

Meanwhile, the congregation was adjusting itself to the pipe organ it had obtained 2 years before (click the picture to enlarge it), originally built in 1885 by Hook & Hastings for the Baptist Church of Hopkinton, NH. According to historian Anderson(4):

The Hook and Hastings organ is almost perfectly matched to the acoustic and architectural space of the church building. It is a small, single manual (keyboard), and pedalboard instrument, with a tracker action (direct mechanical linkage), and with a limited number of stops. It was built in Boston in 1885, just ten years prior to the dedication of Christ's Church.

Over the years and even in the beginning, we were a little disappointed in that we felt the organ was capable of producing better results than we were getting. We had great difficulty in finding competent tuners.(5)

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Quoted in The Scroll, November 1979. (Close)

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What was not known when the organ was purchased… was that the instrument is pitched nearly a half tone higher than standard tuning. It is not possible to add lengths to pipes and so it will always remain at that high pitch. This can be a challenge for tenors trying to sing high parts! It was also quickly learned that wind instruments (clarinets, trumpet, oboes, etc.) could not tune high enough to play with the organ.(6)

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Quoted in Anderson, For All the Saints, op. cit., p. 156. (Close)

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Charles Thorne, Strategy Consultant, Metropolitan New York Synod, undertook a planning study for Christ's Lutheran Church, with the results to be published during the coming year.

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