OUR LEADERSHIP & HISTORY

Committed to our Community since 1854

Here at Zion United Church of Christ, we’re committed to investing our time and efforts into our community of Mount Clemens, Michigan. Originally organized in 1854, Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church was the first German Protestant congregation in Mount Clemens.  Its founding trustees were John Rossow and Abraham Devantler from Prussia, John William Miller and Carsten Roecker from Hanover, and John Charles Reimold and John George Murthum from Wuerttemberg.  Zion Church operated as a free congregation, welcoming all Christians.  It served primarily German-speaking Catholic and Protestant immigrants, including Lutherans, Calvinists and Huguenots.  Worshiping at first in the Macomb County Courthouse, the congregation purchased their current site, the former Methodist Academy, in 1862.  The nave of the present brick sanctuary was built by Minard Barr in 1880.  The tower and transepts were added in 1895.

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The ministers of Zion Church in its formative years were Methodist, Lutheran and Evangellical.  It was not until the 1920s, during the pastorate of the Reverend F.A. Roese (1903-1926), that English became the language of the worship service and of church records.  In the early twentieth century, the congregation turned to humanitarian work.  The congregation helped support the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital and the Evangelical Home for Children and Aged in Detroit.  In 1961 the church received its present name, Zion United Church of Christ.