Building upgrades at Martin Luther School in Joplin, Mo., required coordination of several separate subcontractors, and Laborers For Christ member Lyle Wydeck is there to help. He is the project manager overseeing the installation of a new heating and cooling system, electrical, security system, doors and energy-efficient windows. Principal Jeremy Schamber said “Having Lyle around makes my life a lot easier and saves our congregation a lot of money. Lyle is completely objective and can talk straight to our subcontractors when there is a problem.”

It may not be easy to get members enthused about working to retire debt through a capital campaign, but members of Immanuel Lutheran Church and School, East Dundee, Ill., see it as a way to move forward their ministry plans. Rev. Bill Yonker, senior pastor, said members want to start new churches and expand into elder care services for their community. “We’re at a point that if we’re ambitious enough, we could end our debt with this campaign, and so that has us really energized.”

St. Paul Lutheran Church, Fall Creek, Wis., youth leader Melanie Accola said her group had an “amazing time” at the 2010 National Youth Gathering, held July 17-21 in New Orleans. Making the experience a little easier was LCEF. The youth group at St. Paul maintains a StewardAccount® and used the LCEF Exchange during the Gathering to access funds raised for trip expenses. “The whole experience was just wonderful for us…I think what our kids really took away from this event was that anyone who worked it…was so positive and upbeat.”

Trinity Lutheran Church in Crown Point, Ind., has five separate and well-attended worship services each week, which Senior Pastor Rev. David Easterday says makes it “basically five congregations under one roof.” But for two consecutive years the congregation has pulled together for the Consecrated Stewards program “to understand the joy in giving back to the Lord what He first gave to them,” Easterday said. Also as a result, after every offering members pray “We give Thee but Thine own.”

Hope Lutheran Church, Wake Forest, N.C., received 72 new members and baptized three adults in the past year. Its remarkable growth comes from new Lutherans moving into the area and from people of diversified or no active church backgrounds, some of which come to know Hope through its preschool ministry. “Hope continues to experience growth in giving, membership, and worship attendance each year,” Rev. Preston Wagner said. LCEF has been the congregation’s partner from nearly the beginning by assisting it with a capital campaign and loans. Hope’s latest expansion should be complete this fall.