Pastor John Klawiter sat down last month to pen an obituary to be published in the community newspaper. This was no announcement of a church member's death, but rather a creative way to spread the word that a beloved tradition at Faith Lutheran Church in Forest Lake had reached its quiet end.
The first sentence delivered the news: The church's Scandinavian Dinner — an annual meal featuring lutefisk flanked by helpings of Swedish meatballs, potatoes, cranberries and lefse — "has peacefully died at the age of 70."
Klawiter, a self-identified "lutefisk convert," wanted the write-up to read as a tribute to the seven decades the church has served hundreds of pounds of the pungent and gelatinous Nordic dish on the first Tuesday of December.
"There was a lot of pride that this made it to 70 years," Klawiter said, adding that the decision came with a sense of sadness that was tinged with relief for the 190 or so volunteers the dinner required.
For the past few years, the fall planning meetings preceding the dinner began with a head count, said Sandy Zarembinski, who served as the event's coordinator for the last decade. As the tradition grew older, so too did its core group of volunteers.
That left the planning group to discuss how to fill gaps left by volunteers who had died or grown too frail to spend a day rolling meatballs or wiping tables.
This past fall, the group also wondered how the event could draw more young families from the congregation and the Forest Lake community. Most of the 500 or so people who went to Faith Lutheran and waited their turn for the $20 meal were not members of the church or even Forest Lake residents.
The group wondered if a turkey dinner would be a better option. But a menu change wouldn't relieve the burden on the volunteers, they decided.
