Please join us on this journey with more to come in the weeks and months ahead as we prayerfully consider all that God has entrusted to us.
A capital campaign for expanding ministry
Following the Pentecost event in Acts chapter 2, the first recorded encounter for the disciples is found in Acts chapter 3. Peter and John are going up to the temple to pray. It is three o’clock in the afternoon, the time of almsgiving, and there, outside the Beautiful Gate, is a man who has been lame from birth. He is there to collect daily rations from the people entering the temple.
Peter and John are changed people, carried beyond their fear, denial, and lack of understanding to a place of great power in the resurrection of Jesus, and in the power of the Holy Spirit. On any other day, they may have passed the man by, but on this day, in this moment, we learn that they “looked upon him intently,” and gave him what they had to give, the healing power to stand up and walk.
It is in that divine gaze, the fixed intention of Peter and John, that our Vision 2025 is given eyes. As we see each other again for the first time, we begin the healing of the world, one person at a time, across centuries of oppression and hatred, across the past year of suffering revealed, across the divides of fear and misunderstanding. It is the look of Jesus upon all people, seeing their humanity and responding in love.
This vision will be realized in the body of God’s people called Normandale Lutheran Church, as we continue working the soil of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the soil of our community, creating nourishment for people to thrive. Within the river of our faithful past, we will go forward in faith, expanding our ministry through our core values of Worship Life, Mission and Outreach, and Children, Youth, and Family.
Three Campaign Initiatives
Trinity Commons for Worship, Remembering, and Play is proposed as a common space to meet three needs in truly unique, integrated ways. The three aspects of Trinity Commons are envisioned to be fully incorporated into each other such that outdoor worship, play, and remembrance are all cohesively connected to create the center point for outdoor church life at Normandale Lutheran Church.
We must capture the power of technology to work for good, improving our ability to tell our story more clearly and broadly. Through this initiative, in the coming years, we aim to improve dynamic in-person worship and program experiences, making AV upgrades to the worship space and other spaces, while embracing the new reality that our growing online community needs nurturing and easy-to-access online spaces to gather.
Rooted in the unifying and grace-filled claim of our Welcoming Statement, that “all people are created in the image of God, and as beloved children of God, all are worthy of God’s love and grace,” we recognize and strive to work against anything that serves to marginalize, divide, and value some of God’s children over others.
Every step of the way, we continue to feel the Holy Spirit calling us forth with the commission of Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Through this initiative, may we truly be transformed! As we build new relationships across our fear, as we support and build bridges for others to walk on, and as we learn to listen deeply and heal, we pray that our hearts, minds, and reality be renewed on the way.
What if we become a people who acknowledge the ways we have hurt others, and even, perhaps, turned them off to the “Church?” What if we now boldly proclaim that following Jesus Christ means welcome to all and actively living that welcome in word and deed?
In the years to come, Normandale Lutheran Church will become more widely known as a community that is dedicated to healing the wounds of hatred and division, wounds within ourselves and those caused in others by their past relationship with the church. Normandale members, both current and new, will have opportunities to grow into a faith rooted in the core commands to love God, and to love and be in community with each other, not just some, but all.
Please join us on this journey with more to come in the weeks and months ahead as we prayerfully consider all that God has entrusted to us.
Choose the Vision 2025 Fund
Have questions about Vision 2025? Click HERE to reach out to Vision 2025 Co-Chairs Katie Sieben and Bill Evans.