St. Matthews Lutheran Church (Esko)
4 Elizabeth Avenue, Esko, MN 55733
About St. Matthews Lutheran Church (Esko)
St. Matthews Lutheran Church at 4 Elizabeth Avenue is a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation serving Esko and the surrounding Thomson Township. The LCMS locator reports 439 confirmed members and average weekly attendance of 169 for the 2024 report year (accessed 2026-08-13).
Those numbers are worth reading against the community. Esko is an unincorporated place with no city government, no downtown, and one restaurant, in a township whose population is measured in the low thousands. A congregation drawing 169 people on an average Sunday is, in that context, one of the largest regular gatherings in the community after the school.
The congregation's roots run back to the immigrant farm families who settled Thomson Township between the 1870s and the early 1900s. In a community with no municipal institutions, the church and the school do essentially all of the institutional work.
Service times change and are not published here without confirmation. Contact the congregation directly.
Neighborhoods it serves
The school district people move for, on an old farm settlement 20 minutes from Duluth.
CarltonThe county seat at the gates of Jay Cooke, where the Munger Trail meets the gorge.
CloquetThe mill town that burned down in 1918 and rebuilt itself, twenty minutes from Duluth.
ScanlonThe small city between Cloquet and Esko, on the river and the interstate.
Where these facts come from
- LCMS church locator, St. Matthews Lutheran Church, Esko (2024 report year) accessed 2026-08-13
Last reviewed 2026-08-13 by Guide editorial.