History

Thiensville Church and School: St. Cecilia

Although the village of Thiensville was founded in 1831, the small community did not have a neighborhood Catholic Church until a small group of German and Irish families established St. Cecilia Parish in 1919. It is thought the name St. Cecilia was chosen because her feast day is November 22, the day prior to the first Mass in Thiensville.

In the beginning St. Cecilia was a mission church built on land donated by Peter and Josephine Ellenbecker. The first church was a simple wooden structure located on the top of the hill on what is now Orchard Street, where parishioners continued to worship, learn and serve. The first pastor of the mission was Father Albert E. Darnieder. In 1928, the church added a choir loft and steeple. By 1940, St Cecilia had grown to 85 families and a new church was built to accommodate its growing numbers. Father Peter A. Bronner arrived in 1946 as the first full-time pastor.

Even though membership was small, the parishioners of St. Cecilia took on the building of a school. A two-story school, was built and opened in 1956. The teaching staff consisted of three Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother and one lay teacher. Over 160 children were enrolled in grades one through eight. The school building included housing for the Sisters on the upper floor, six classrooms, and a gymnasium. The purchase of a house to serve as a convent, made additional classroom space available, but classrooms were still crowded. The present church building with additional classrooms under the church was added in 1963.  The lannon stone church was converted into a parish center in 1976. The church was renovated in late 1988. The Thiensville site, formerly St Cecilia Parish, was sold after the move to parish facilities in Mequon in 2016.

Mequon Church and School: St. James

During the mid-1800’s, a group of people left Trier, Germany because of crop failure and bad times. They arrived in America and settled in the lower part of Ozaukee County and named the place “Mekaian Settlements”.

In May of 1842, Peter Backes opened his home to a visiting priest,  Father Martin Kundig of Milwaukee, and hosted the first Mass in the area. In 1845, a parish was established and a log church was built, later replaced by a stone church in 1855. For several years, the congregation had missionary priests. In 1848, Father Xavier Obermueller took charge of St. James Parish. A log schoolhouse was built and it was used until 1881, when a stone structure was built to accommodate the 50 pupils attending the school. This stone structure survived until 1954, when it was destroyed by a fire.

In 1869, the parish received its first resident pastor, Father Casper Scharttin. Parish membership peaked that year at over 60 families. Parish membership declined and in 1889, St. James was made a mission of St. Catherine Church of Granville.  In spite of the declining membership, the stone church was razed and a frame church was built in 1891. The new structure was struck by lightning and destroyed in a fire in 1902.  The parishioners quickly rebuilt. The congregation size was reduced again to only thirty families when St. Cecilia Parish was organized at Thiensville in 1919. St. James remained a mission of St. Catherine Parish until the mid-1950’s.

In 1956, St. James became an independent parish when membership grew due to the population moving from the city of Milwaukee to the suburbs. Fr. James Fleming tenure's at the parish began at this time until the early 1970s. Plans were made in 1958 to erect a temporary church and school at a cost of $330,000. The chapel facility was used for the first time at midnight Mass on Christmas, 1959. St. James School opened in September, 1960. A brick convent was built for the School Sisters on Notre Dame who served the school. Statistics for 1973 showed that the 200 families of 1956 had grown to a total of 650. 235 children attended the parish school. In 1974, the Parish Council decided a new church was needed and in 1976, 800 families gathered at midnight Mass for the first liturgical celebration in the current church.


 

Mergers

In 1984, St. Cecilia School and St. James School were joined in one of the most successful school consolidations in the Archdiocese. The name became Sts. Cecilia and James Catholic School, Inc., a corporation separate from each parish, but sponsored by both. Younger students in 3K to grade 3 attended school at the Thiensville site and the older students in grades 4-8 attended classes at the Mequon site. This was followed a few years later by the merger of the Christian formation program. On July 1, 2005, under the guidance of Father Thomas DeVries and Father Dennis Andrews, both parishes and all programs merged to become Lumen Christi Catholic Church. The feast day chosen for the new parish is the Feast of the Epiphany, to commemorate the day the “Light of Christ” was revealed to the world.

Lumen Christi Parish operated at two sites, in Mequon and in Thiensville, after the parish merger. In the fall of 2014, the parish began plans to unite all parish facilities at the Mequon site under the leadership of then pastor, Father Dan Sanders. Phase 1 of the plans consisted of renovationa and expansion of the school building and turning the former gym into meetings spaces and a new parish office. All students now attend classes on one site in Mequon. Phase 2 was the renovation of the church. The new worship space was dedicated on December 22, 2019 - just in time for Christmas! Since the dedication, the remaining unfinished mosaics for the ambo and tabernalce have been completed with the final piece being the Our Lady of Guadalupe mosaic, which was installed and blessed in August 2021. 

The school and parish communities of Lumen Christi celebrate our history while anticipating a wonderful future, as “One Light, One Future Together”.