With open arms

A few years ago, the Rev. Cindy Cone was serving in Fremont.

She left Nebraska for a position in Kansas.

Now, she’s back -- not to Fremont, but a town just a few miles down the road.

Cone has started a new church called, Spirit of Peace, in Valley. As part of the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, the congregation meets on Sundays for worship at 10 a.m. and for Sunday school at 11 a.m., all at Reichmuth Funeral Home in Valley. There are other activities, too.

“We’re having home Bible studies on various nights in various homes and we’re excited about growing,” she said.

About a dozen people have been attending services since the church started about a month ago. The congregation is small, she said, but is seeking to reach out.

The new ministry is yet another chapter in Cone’s own journey of faith.

Originally from Kansas City, Mo., Cone earned a bachelor’s degree from Mid America Nazarene College and was a respiratory therapist for 20 years.

Then one year, Cone was frustrated because she wasn’t able to get Easter off.

A pastor friend asked Cone why she was angry.

She told him that she wanted to be in church.

“He asked me to go home and pray and look at my calendar and come back and let him know where my time was always spent -- and it was at church,” she said. “So he asked me what I thought I needed to do and I thought I needed to go to seminary. So I did.”

Cone graduated in 1997 from Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn., and has served churches in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas City, Mo. She was associate pastor at Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church for about two years. She then returned to Kansas City where she served a congregation for two years.

That small congregation couldn’t afford to sustain itself financially and closed; she then worked in a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation, being in charge of small groups and parish health.

Then Cone said she began what she calls a wrestling match with God about starting a new congregation.

“God and I really wrestled about that,” she said.

God would win.

“I was in a conversation with a friend who asked me why I was afraid to answer the call and do something new and I just told her I was scared,” she said. “She told me that I needed to get out of the boat and just do it.”

The friend was referring to a Bible story in which the Apostle Peter gets out of a boat and walks on water toward Jesus.

“God and I wrestled with beginning a new congregation and in that wrestling of sorts, the call was to come to Valley and begin Spirit of Peace,” she said.

So she took the step of faith. She and her husband, Ron, an electrician, moved to Valley. They’ve enjoyed being back in Nebraska.

“It’s so cool to see kids out riding bikes and people walking and that sense of community that is so valued that you don’t see in the city,” she said.

The Cones have extended family. Their daughter, Cheryl and her husband, Fletcher, live in Olathe, Kan. with their four children. Son Patrick and his wife, Corrine, live in Sedalia, Mo., and have a son.

These days, Cone looks forward to the church’s future.

“We’re just looking to reach out in the community and walk a faith journey with people as they struggle with life, and to provide a welcoming place where people can come and can continue to grow,” she said.

For more information about the church, call (402) 932-7432.