09/04/2026
Dear Church,
I'll be honest with you. Sitting down to write this note, I feel two things at once, terrified and excited, and I haven't quite figured out how to separate them.
I keep thinking about the people who came before us. In 1968, seven churches looked at a growing little town called Norwalk and decided something was worth planting here. In 1971, a handful of families gathered in the vocal room at Norwalk High School with folding chairs and big faith and not much else. In 1973, they built something. In 1979, they built more. In 1999, they built again. None of them knew exactly how it would turn out. They just trusted that God was faithful and took the next step anyway.
That's the room I feel like WE are standing in right now.
Our Dream Team has spent almost two years asking hard questions about what's next for New Life, meetings, discussions, decisions, a lot of prayer along the way. That work led to a recommendation to the church council to move forward with a Major Capital Campaign, and the council has unanimously approved that direction. We've engaged GSB Fundraising (www.gsbfr.com) to help guide us through it, and WE will be working closely with Nathan Swenson-Reinhold and Mike Ward, partners at GSB, on this.
The first step is a pre-campaign survey and information sharing and gathering process to figure out where we really are. More details are coming. In the meantime, Jonathan Lund and Greg Hayworth, our Dream Team Co-chairs, would love to hear from you if you've got questions.
If you're feeling some nerves reading this, I get it. I have some too. Campaigns like this ask a lot of a church, our time, our trust, our resources. But I don't think faith was ever meant to just keep us comfortable. It's meant to call us toward hope, the kind that steps forward before it can see the whole path. That's what I think WE are being invited into here.
This weekend is Labor Day. Take the rest if you can find it. But grace doesn't take a day off, it's constantly resetting us, showing up new every morning whether we notice or not. That's exactly where our next sermon series picks up. Starting this Sunday, we're in “RESET..", three weeks on what it looks like to let God interrupt our routines and our tired patterns with something new. As the psalmist prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).
See you in church, Pastor Nate
Email from New Life Lutheran Church Friday, September 4, 2026 Friday, September 4, 2026 "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10) Dear Church, I'll
