First Evangelical Free Church

Organized on April 7, 1884, by revivalists August Davis and F. M. Johnson, this congregation as the Church of Christ, this congregation went through a series of name changes in the next twenty years.  It became the Scandinavian Church of Christ on May 12, 1884, and in 1904 the First Scandinavian Evangelical Free Church of the U.S.A.  The congregation was the mother church of all Evangelical Free congregations in the city, and it also sponsored groups in outstate Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Meetings were initially held in the Freja Hall at Washington and 5th Avenue South. The group built a church at 12th Avenue and 7th Street South, completing it in 1885. The building was enlarged in 1907 and again in 1908. It was remodeled in 1926 to seat 1100. The congregation sent and supported missionaries to China, South America, and Africa as well as Kentucky, Holdrege, Nebraska, Chicago, and Salt Lake City. Locally, individual members worked at the Home of Shelter in northeast Minneapolis.