On its 65th anniversary, there are numbers that tell Trinity Lutheran Church’s story—six buildings, 211 students, 65 years since its founding. But ask the Rev. Chris Duckworth to describe the church, and he starts with its heart, instead.
“We’re a congregation walking in love and faith, and we reflect our community,” Duckworth said. “We’re young and old. We speak Spanish as our first language and English as our first language. We’re immigrant and we’re native-born. We’re of European descent and we’re of Latino descent. We’re all the above. We reflect our community, and we seek to reflect the love of God in this community.”
That reflection is visible every weekend, when Trinity holds three services—two in English, one in Spanish. About a quarter of the congregation’s weekly worshippers attend the Spanishlanguage service, many of them former members of Cristo el Rey (Christ the King) Lutheran Church, a Spanish-speaking congregation that merged with Trinity roughly seven years ago.
The milestone was marked last month with a service that Duckworth describes as a homecoming. The Rev. Rob Cosmas, a former pastor of the church, shared stories of ministry through the years and preached a message that Duckworth said was filled with joy.
The church was founded in 1961 after retiree John Schuetzner and a group of about 30 Lutherans discovered there was no Lutheran church in the area. Pastored by the Rev. Henry Young, the new congregation started meeting in the Orange Gardens Community Building before their first building was erected in December 1961.
Trinity quickly grew—as did that part of Osceola County— as construction began on Walt Disney World several years later.
“Some church members had the fortune of selling some of their property and some of those folks were really generous in helping us build our buildings here,” Duckworth said. “What we’ve arrived at within the first generation of the church was a campus of six or seven buildings, multiple church services, and a school.”
Started in 1983, Trinity Lutheran School is now a prekindergarten through 12th grade school with about 211 students, Duckworth said, calling the school an extension of the church’s ministry.
“It’s such an amazing way that we get to connect with the community,” he said. “They’re not necessarily here on Sundays. Some of them are going to other churches or aren’t involved in religious life. But they’re here during the week, and they’re part of our community, and we’re part of their lives.”
Duckworth himself came to Trinity in February of this year. A native of Philadelphia who has also served congregations in Virginia, Minnesota and Indiana, he majored in Latin American Studies at the College of William and Mary after college classmates who were immigrants shared their language and culture with him. He said he’d long wanted to serve in a multicultural, bilingual setting but hadn’t found the right fit until he opened himself to national placement within the Lutheran church and was matched with Kissimmee.
“I love the vitality and the diversity,” he said. “It’s been a great place for me to land.”
The pastor said that like many congregations, Trinity has navigated a period of diminished attendance, especially since the pandemic. “We’re in the midst of a lot of considering and reconsidering our calling here,” he said. “But it certainly is that we reflect our community, and we want to reflect God’s love in this community.”
The Rev. Rob Cosmas serves communion at the 65th anniversary service at Trinity Lutheran Church in Kissimmee. (Submitted photo)
