First Lutheran Church of Venice is a congregation in the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod (LCMS), located on the westside of Los Angeles. It serves the communities of Venice, Mar Vista and Marina del Rey, and is in the Pacific Southwest District of the LCMS. The church offers both traditional and contemporary services and runs First Lutheran School of Venice. The church was founded in 1944.
With 331 members as of 2006, it is the third largest LCMS congregation in Los Angeles and the largest in its circuit, which includes churches in Beverly Hills, Inglewood and Santa Monica.
Venice is home to a thriving artistic community, and church programs and activities draw on that resource. Since 2001, the church has hosted a Masters in the Chapel music series which has featured performances by artists from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Chorale. The series was begun in the wake of the church's restoration, following a 1998 electrical fire which gutted the sanctuary. The church's pipe organ, which was designed in 2004 by the builder of those at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, is also featured in the events.
The church also features an external mural, Jesus Roller Skating with Friends in Venice Beach, created in 1997 by Father Maur Van Doorslaer, a Benedictine monk. The work has been described as being second in local popularity only to Venice's Ballerina Clown statue.
Famous quotes containing the words church and/or venice:
“To impose celibacy on such a large body as the clergy of the Catholic Church is not to forbid it to have wives but to order it to be content with the wives of others.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)
“Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)