Immanuel Lutheran Church in Seymour opened its doors to parishioners for the first time in 1870.
From nearly the beginning, the church also has operated a school to provide a Christian education to children.
In fact, during the 2024-25 school year, a sesquicentennial celebration is in the works. As part of the celebration of the school’s 150 years of service, a $4 million Faith in Our Future Campaign has been put in place to continue the mission of providing a Christian education in the years to come.
“It just shows you that the Christian education of children has been our DNA from Day 1,” Pastor Ralph Blomenberg said. “When we started looking at celebrating that, we realized there were a couple of things we wanted to do.”
The first is to build upon what has been done in the past while going forward, and there are significant things that need to be done to improve on the school, he said.
“We believe Christian education is as important today as it was back in 1870 because we need children to understand who they are as God’s people,” Blomenberg said. “ … and how they navigate what’s going on in our culture today and have the foundation they need to be able to live lives that serve the community and to continue to carry the faith forward.”
As part of that effort, church leaders started looking at what needed to be done to bring the school up to date, he said.
“It’s three different phases,” Blomenberg said of the construction of the present building.
The first phase was built in 1949, an addition was added in 1975 and the third addition, which included a new gym, was added in 2005.
“It was a really nice addition,” Blomenberg said.
The first project, which has a $2 million price tag, involves updating restrooms, ceilings, walls, windows and the playground with the idea of making everything safe and up to code. The upgrades also include installing lockers on the second floor, new stoves and other appliances in the kitchen and replacing the HVAC system as needed, the roof of the old gymnasium and the public address system.
All of the work will occur inside the present building, which limits construction to the summertime when school is not in session.
Blomenberg said the plan is to start that work this summer, continue it in the summer of 2024 and wrap it up in the summer of 2025 just in time for the sesquicentennial celebration.
The second portion of the 150th anniversary campaign is establishing a school endowment fund. The minimum goal of that effort is $250,000 to $500,000.
“We would like to make sure there is a steady stream to allow us to keep those things up to date,” Blomenberg said. “We don’t want to have to do this every 20 years.”
The third part of the project involves a new building at an estimated cost of $1.5 million for the school’s Child Care Ministry, which was established 10 years ago in the basement of the church.
“It’s busting at the seams,” Blomenberg said. “We have a waiting list, and we can’t accommodate all of them. We have 91 kids starting from 6 weeks old all the way through pre-kindergarten. We just don’t have the space.”
Five of the seven classrooms are grouped together in the basement of Immanuel Lutheran Church, while the remaining two classrooms are now located in the school, making it inefficient and creating potential safety issues. The present space also doesn’t provide adequate play space, and the center does not have a dedicated kitchen.
The hope with the project is to give the two classrooms being used by the Child Care Ministry back to the school, Blomenberg said.
While the school has continued to grow over the years (the present enrollment is about 325), the biggest demand is infant care, he said.
“What we try to do is provide that high-quality, Christian-based infant care,” Blomenberg said.
The church is looking at a building that is designed specifically for child care, he said.
“The rooms we have downstairs work perfectly well for child care,” Blomenberg said. “They are designed for infants and been completely remodeled for that, but then there’s only so much we can handle. So we can either say, ‘Well, this is all we can do and you are going to have go someplace else’ or we need add more space and say, ‘Yeah, we’d loved to be able to serve you.’”
The church has acquired some property over the years adjacent to the campus and has the place for the child care center, Blomenberg said.
“We’ve had to think ahead a little bit of that,” he said. “We had to do the same thing for the expansion of the school (back in 2005). We had to acquire some property before we could do that.”
The overall goal of the school improvement project is to provide an affordable Christian education for years to come for people, he said.
Blomenberg said they have found that a lot of people in the congregation have come on board with the project.
“We have a lot of young people involved,” he said. “In fact, some of the leaders of the campaign have families that include school-age children or even younger.”
Blomenberg said many of the younger members see the value of Christian education.
Associated Pastor William Fredstrom agreed. He said the co-chairs of the campaign are Chris and Anne Stahl and Grant and Heather VonDielingen.
“And Brent and Sandy Kilgas also are serving as co-chairs,” Fredstrom said.
He said one of the intentional aims as far as the campaign goes is not to rely completely on those who have been involved in such efforts in the past but to raise up the next generation.
“Our cabinet of the campaign committee members is kind of split between people under 40 and people over 40, which is so exciting as a culture and as a church to see people starting to say, ‘Not only will we help you to grow as we get ready to step away,’” Fredstrom said. “And they come in ready to go and do it.”
That has allowed for a lot of the 20- and 30-year-olds in the congregation to come in and say the project matters to them, Fredstrom said.
The kids also are going to be involved in the campaign by contributing pennies and in other ways so they can feel like it’s their school, Blomenberg said.
“They’ve written prayers, and there is a whole wall of them,” he said. “It’s interesting to see their perspective.”
The prayers have been placed along a glass wall on the north side of the church for all to see.
Blomenberg said planning for the project started in 2021-22. A school improvement committee presented a proposal to the voters assembly in July 2022. Voters approved the project and fundraising campaign at that time. The fall was spent organizing the fundraising campaign before officially being announced to the congregation in January. The plan and financial planning were laid out for the congregation.
Blomenberg said if people are going to contribute to something, they have a right to know how their money is going to be used.
He said the campaign already has raised enough money to pay for the projects planned this summer at the school.
“Because of supply chain issues, you have to order that stuff way ahead of schedule,” Blomenberg said.
Church member Dale VonDielingen is overseeing the construction part of the project, which will utilize local contractors and even some members of the congregation.
How to help
If interested in supporting the Faith in Our Future Campaign, email [email protected] and you will receive a personal follow-up.