A church on the verge of closing. A pastor who had fallen away as a Baptist and rediscovered the mercy of Christ in the Lutheran church. Mix these two together and you get a miracle that can only be from God.

St. James Lutheran Church in Glen Carbon, Ill., had been shrinking for years. A bedroom community just 25 minutes from St. Louis, the town is mostly residential and quiet. And in 2018 it was very quiet at St. James, considering the church’s membership was sitting right around 15 people.

Meanwhile, Rev. Aaron Mueller wasn’t a pastor anymore. Nor was he even interested in Christianity.

“I grew up Baptist and was a Baptist pastor for a while,” Mueller said. “I fell away from the church in my early 30s and came back to the church after I visited Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville when I was looking at preschools for my son.”

Mueller found more than a preschool. The senior pastor at Good Shepherd reached out to Mueller, and even visited him at home one Sunday.

“He discipled me, and because of him, I came back to faith,” Mueller said of Pastor Michael Walther. “I stayed at Good Shepherd as a layperson for six or seven years, and then colloquized into the LCMS as an associate pastor at Good Shepherd.”

This would seem like a happy ending to the story, but it was only the beginning.

“People crave this. They don’t want to be lonely anymore.”

–Rev. Aaron Mueller

A “gutsy” sacrifice
A group of elders from St. James, just 15 minutes away, came and told the Good Shepherd leadership that unless they had some help, the church would close that year. By the grace of God, when they asked if Good Shepherd would loan them a pastor, it was a resounding yes.

“If it hadn’t been for Pastor Walther at Good Shepherd…” said Mueller. “It was his call. If he’d thought this was a bad idea, he could have shut it down. But he didn’t. He said, ‘We should make the sacrifice and do this.’ It was a gutsy call on his part.”

So, in 2018, Mueller began serving at St. James while still called to Good Shepherd. He was, in a sense, on loan to St. James—and by the end of the first year, there were enough new members at St. James to officially call him their full-time pastor in 2019.

“At first, there were just the 15 of us,” recalled Mueller. “I admit I was a little nervous that nothing would happen here. But still, I was too stupid to be anything but excited. Plus, I had the support of Good Shepherd’s pastoral staff and the elders, and these 15 people were all in, so it seemed like a big adventure.”

The adventure unfolded and led to tremendous spiritual growth and a community of people committed to loving each other and God. Before long, more and more people joined in on this miraculous adventure.

The church grew from 15 members to around 225 in just five short years.

“One thing I discovered is that Lutherans love it if you preach from the Bible,” laughed Mueller. “That was a big deal, and everything just took off. I was also determined that we would be a church that lived life together, eating meals together, coming together as a community in each other’s houses.”

“People crave this,” Mueller said. “They don’t want to be lonely anymore. They want to be with people they can laugh with, grieve with.”

A place of healing
Mueller knew a thing or two about grieving. His departure from the Baptist church hadn’t been a positive one, and it left him broken. St. James had been broken, too. After all, at one time, the church nearly closed.

Now that the church was starting to grow too big for its space, the leadership knew it would be wise to call their LCEF District Vice President Paul Reaves to discuss Ministry Clarity before any next steps were taken.

Conversations during the strategic planning and vision process kept returning to this: St. James is a place of healing. Through LCEF’s Ministry Clarity process, they found that the three pillars of healing, community and restoration resonated, not only with Mueller, but with so many other congregation members.

“We were able to see things that we weren’t going to see ourselves because we were too close to the situation,” said Mueller. “We had to step outside and see what God was doing from a fly-on-the-wall perspective. We saw that many people had come out of church situations where they’d been wounded for one reason or another.”

Tom Eggebrecht, senior vice president of LCEF Ministry Solutions, was also instrumental in helping St. James to narrow down their ministry focus and identity.

“He helped us see who we are and how God had gifted us specifically for certain things,” Mueller said. “We learned to ask, ‘Does this ministry fit within these three pillars?’ We’re really thinking about developing a counseling center in the future, helping people focus on what the Gospel means for fractured relationships and broken experiences.”

Rev. Walther, left and Rev. Mueller.

A great joy
St. James has embarked on a five-year plan and capital campaign because of its Ministry Clarity work. They’re hoping to add some educational space, sanctuary space, offices and a narthex so that the congregation can gather. Mueller mentioned that he wouldn’t have been able to undertake any of those plans on his own—and that the bonus is getting to know Eggebrecht and Reaves.

“It has been a true joy to work with St. James on the LCEF Ministry Clarity process,” Eggebrecht said. “As a congregation that has risen out of the ashes, St. James is filled with a dynamic pastor, passionate leaders and a willing congregation that has this ministry poised to grow and build, but especially to expand God’s Kingdom in creative ways.”

St. James continues to grow, not just in membership but spiritually.

“This has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Mueller, “all starting with Good Shepherd’s sacrifice to pay a pastor to keep a church alive—they didn’t need to do that.”

“At a time when I wasn’t interested in Christianity, God decided that Pastor Walther would disciple me, come to my house and save my life,” Mueller explained. “I experienced a ton of healing, and my marriage did too.”

The thought of St. James going from the brink of closure to now being a wonderful, vibrant church is nothing short of a miracle. Of course, God is in the business of doing miracles, and St. James is a living testament to it.