Chapter 1 - oslcparksville

The Pioneer Years (1938-1941)

This chapter is based on a longer account of Our Saviour Lutheran Church’s earliest history, which is available from the church office for those who would like to know more. Much of this information comes from the diaries that Pastor Bill Doeling kept throughout his Vancouver Island ministry, 1938-1945.

What a great celebration it was on Sunday, January 9, 1938. The scattered outposts of “the Vancouver Island Parish” were receiving their very own pastor! Fifty-five people gathered at Trinity Lutheran Church in Duncan to welcome him. His name was Rev. William (Bill) F. Doeling.

The pastor who installed him, Rev. Richard Holtzen, had travelled over from Chilliwack just to do this. Holtzen was the real pioneer. He started visiting isolated little clusters of Lutherans all over the Island back in 1931. He was relieved to hand over responsibility for this huge mission field to Pastor Doeling. As both men knew, the challenges were great. Most of the 4,000 or so Lutherans who lived on the Island were loggers and sawmill workers living in far-flung camps. How to care for them? The first serious attempt to do so had been made in 1936, when Pastor Holtzen arranged for a seminary graduate named Hans Petersen to be sent to Port Alberni. He was a capable man who could preach in English, German, Danish, and Norwegian. He quickly established “preaching stations” in Coombs, Hornby Island, Courtenay, Campbell River, Youbou, Duncan, and Victoria. But for some reason, Petersen did not continue visiting these places for long. The work faltered. It was only when Pastor Doeling arrived on the scene that all of these mission stations began to receive the regular pastoral care they needed.

Rev. W. F. Doeling Seminary graduation photo, 1935

Pastor Doeling was the right man for the job. Born in North Dakota in 1910, he received a good education at Concordia College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, graduating in 1935. Unfortunately, it was the bottom of the Depression, and very few parishes could afford to call a pastor. So he had to wait for a year before being assigned to his first parish. Finally, in the summer of 1936, he began serving several small congregations around Vulcan, Alberta. The very next day after he was installed as pastor of the Vancouver Island Parish, Pastor Doeling made his first visit to Parksville. Mostly he travelled by car between the little mission groups that Petersen had established a few years earlier. The roads were rough, but his farm background made it easy for him to keep his old car, “the Dakota Maid,” going. The church

paid him 6 cents a mile: 4 cents directly to cover operating expenses, and 2 cents into a car-replacement fund. To stretch his income as far as possible, he often used the back seat of the Dakota Maid as a camping kitchen.

Obviously, people had to nurture their own faith for the long weeks between his pastoral visits. So, Pastor Doeling offered Sunday School sessions for all ages after each service. To build a good foundation, the textbook was Luther’s Small Catechism. Every family was encouraged to buy its own copy, either in German for 40 cents or a bilingual German-English edition for 60 cents.

Parksville was the smallest mission in Pastor Doeling’s circuit. Its little handful of people met once a month in the home of Mr. Fred Gulbe in Coombs. The first worship service had 8 people in attendance and the offering was $1.00. Only rarely did attendance hit double digits; the average turnout in 1938 was only 9. Offerings ranged from a low of 45 cents to a high of $2.35, and the total for the year was $13.94. Thankfully, the Alberta-BC District was committed to subsidizing Pastor Doeling’s ministry and did not require his geographically huge but numerically tiny parish to pay its own way.

Between visits, the pastor kept in touch with his parishioners by letters that he copied on a “hectograph” (a gelatin duplicator). Each copy cost 3 cents to mail, and an average mailing to Parksville was 15 to 20 letters. In addition to an invitation to worship, Pastor Doeling also included devotional resources in some of these mailings, like Lenten devotional booklets.

In weeks when no worship services could be held (that is, 3 weeks out of the month), Pastor Doeling

encouraged people to listen to the Lutheran Hour. Its main broadcast originated in St. Louis, Missouri, with Dr. Walter A. Maier speaking. Since its beginning in 1930, The Lutheran Hour had become the most popular religious radio program in the world. A Canadian version of the program also reached a large audience in western Canada. Pastor Doeling’s diary shows that he made an announcement about The Lutheran Hour every month or two, as part of his tireless efforts to keep his little mission-groups fed and nurtured in Christ.

It was exhausting work. A typical mission trip to all the points of his parish took 12 days. On one such trip in January 1939, he conducted 5 worship services in English, plus 2 in German… led 1 special “young people’s service”… taught 2 Sunday School classes… led 2 confirmation classes… and made 26 pastoral calls… in 6 different towns. Whew!

Later in 1939, the outbreak of World War II created many difficulties for the Island’s Lutherans. Until June 1940, German continued to be used in worship services in Duncan and Courtenay. From then on, all activities in the whole Vancouver Island Parish were conducted in English only—as the pastor explained, “in order that we give no offense or appearance or occasion to the enemies of the church.”

Supporting this shift to English was the introduction of an excellent new hymnal in 1941. Years in the making, The Lutheran Hymnal offered a rich but flexible liturgy plus 4-part musical

accompaniment for every hymn. This was great for congregational singing! Even so, singing was not always possible in very small mission-stations like Coombs—especially when there were only 3 or 4 worshippers! But Pastor Doeling encouraged every family to buy its own hymnal anyway. They were sold at a special introductory price of $1.00.

As the war continued, a number of special offerings were taken for its victims. In December 1939, the Young People’s Society in Port Alberni collected $10.65 “to help in the alleviation of suffering in the scourge of war.” The Vancouver Island Parish as a whole collected $14.50 in February and March 1941 “to help the physical suffering of the Lutheran foreign missions, which are cut off from their homeland on account of the war.” Later that year, Pastor Doeling announced that “The Army, Navy, and Air Force Commission of our church asks for special offerings to help serve the men in our country’s services. These are to be made to the pastor privately or by marked envelopes.”

How long could one man keep all these mission-stations going, under wartime conditions? By the summer of 1940, Pastor Doeling’s fading energy forced him to discontinue many of his usual activities, including Sunday School and youth work throughout the parish. Even Sunday services were cancelled for the summer in the Hornby Island outpost. Six months later, Pastor Doeling’s relentless workload wore him down to the point that he had to take a full week off.

Even before this, Pastor Doeling had been asking the Alberta-BC District to supply him with a “pastoral assistant.” In August 1940, it looked like a candidate would soon be coming. But it turned out that no-one was available. The war had totally reversed the over-supply of pastoral candidates that had been such a problem just a few years earlier when Pastor Doeling himself had graduated from seminary.

Undeterred, Pastor Doeling kept pleading with church leaders for help. In November 1940 he managed to arrange a two-day visit by Rev. F. C. Streufert, the Director of Missions for the whole Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, who came all the way from St. Louis to see the Vancouver Island Parish for himself! This visit seems to have done the trick. Less than a month later, Pastor Doeling announced with jubilation that a second permanent pastor would soon be called to the Vancouver Island Parish.

But still the delays continued. In March 1941, Pastor Doeling reassured the Port Alberni group that this second pastor would be coming “soon.” A month later, it was announced that the new man would be responsible for the northern half of the Island while Pastor Doeling would continue serving the southern half. Three weeks later, worshippers learned that the pastor who had received this call had declined it. Then, on June 1: “The divine call to the Alberni parish has been extended to the Rev. [Alfred L.] Enders. May God guide his decision.” Finally, two weeks later, a little group of 7 worshippers at the Gulbe home in Coombs was the first mission-station to hear the joyous news: “Rev. Enders has accepted our call.”

As a new graduate from the St. Louis seminary, Pastor Enders was ordained and installed in the Port Alberni mission-station, which was not even formally organized at that point, on Sunday, July 6, 1941. After conducting this service, Pastor Doeling turned over to Pastor Enders the full responsibility for what would now be known as the Alberni Parish. As he told the people that day, “Your pastor for the past 3½ years now takes leave to limit his work to the Victoria

Parish.” For the sake of his health, and to help the work move forward, this division of the huge Vancouver Island mission-field was exactly what was needed.

Although this was the end of Pastor Doeling’s ministry in the Parksville area, the rest of his story is worth knowing. The year after limiting his work to the southern part of the Island, Pastor Doeling married his longtime sweetheart, Kathleen McRoberts. They met during his pastorate in Vulcan, when she was still in high school. Sadly, their marriage was short. Pastor Doeling’s heart had been damaged as a child when he contracted rheumatic fever. He became seriously ill in the summer of 1944, right around the time his and Kathleen’s only child, Linda, was born. He died on October 7, 1945, and was buried in Royal Oak Cemetery in Victoria. Although his entire pastoral ministry lasted less than 10 years, Pastor Doeling had poured himself into it and sowed many seeds that eventually came to bear great fruit in many places—including Parksville.

In Their Own Words

Pastor Doeling, encouraging people to listen to The Lutheran Hour (April 3, 1938): The Canadian Lutheran Hour from station CFCN in Calgary (1030 kilocycles) announces their 100^th broadcast, today at 5:30 PM. If you hear this broadcast, please write and tell them of this reception on this, their anniversary. Tune in also to the [inter]national Lutheran Hour from the States, coming over a coast-to-coast network of 59 stations, among them KOL of Seattle, which is quite easily heard here. This national Lutheran Hour features Dr. Maier as speaker, universally recognized as one of the most powerful radio preachers on the air. When it is impossible for you to attend here, tune in this Lutheran Hour from KOL at 1:30 every Sunday afternoon One of Pastor Doeling’s typical mission-trips, starting and ending in Duncan (January 1939):

Sunday, January 8, Duncan: Divine Service (German), attendance 43; Sunday School attendance 14; confirmation class attendance 5
Also Sunday, January 8, Victoria: Divine Service (English), attendance 11
Monday-Tuesday, January 9-10, Duncan: 3 pastoral calls
Wednesday January 11, Parksville: Divine Service (English), attendance 7
Thursday-Sunday, January 12-15, Port Alberni: Divine Service (English), attendance 17; Sunday School attendance 7; confirmation class attendance 4; young people’s service (attendance 21); 15 pastoral calls
Sunday-Tuesday, January 15-17, Courtenay: Divine Service (English), attendance 32; Divine Service (German), attendance 27; Sunday School attendance 11; confirmation class attendance 6; 8 pastoral calls
Wednesday, January 18, Hornby Island: Divine Service (English), attendance 28
Thursday, January 19, drove back to Duncan

Sunday, September 3, 1939 (two days after Germany invaded Poland, but a full week before Canada declared war)—Pastor Doeling’s encouragement to the Lutherans in Port Alberni: As our Word of God in today’s service taught us [Proverbs 28:1], let us never lose heart but always practice the virtue of Christian courage, knowing that in all times, war as well as peace, we are grounded on the infallible Rock of our Salvation.

Pastor Doeling’s last entry in his diary for 1938, his first year of ministry in the Vancouver Island Parish:

Dec. 31, 1938. Closed another year of grace. God pardon our many shortcomings and continue His grace and blessings upon us. Soli Deo Gloria! [To God alone be the glory!]