After learning about Jesus’ love and forgiveness, a couple finds a new purpose.

Tony and Sarah Carmody were not really looking for a church.

It’s not that they weren’t religious. They believed in God, prayed, and attended a Catholic church once in a while. That was enough, they thought.

Until they received an invitation to celebrate Easter at Anchor, a WELS home mission that started holding services in Marquette, Mich., in the fall of 2024.

Over the next year, Tony and Sarah developed an understanding of grace, a deeper knowledge of the Bible, a sense of belonging, and a new purpose in life.

Says Sarah, “We talk about it sometimes. We’re like, ‘What did we do before we went to church on Sundays? What did we do before we had Anchor?’ We don’t really remember. We just feel like we’ve been there forever. And I think that’s a really special thing.”

A new connection to church

Both Tony and Sarah grew up as Christians. When Tony was a child, his family—at the insistence of his grandparents—attended a Methodist church, albeit sporadically. “Once my grandparents had passed—I guess that was the glue to bringing us to church—then we didn’t have that connection,” he says.

Sarah grew up Catholic. “We were never like an every Sunday kind of thing, and I did not understand anything,” she says. “I just knew that you went in, you were quiet, you were up, you were down, you were all around, you sang, and that’s all.”

Yet something about it brought her comfort. When she started college, she continued attending a Catholic church with her friends. “It made me feel better going,” she says, though she also admits that she never felt like she really belonged.

Tony and Sarah were married in the Catholic church—“We wanted a blessed wedding,” says Sarah—and attended a few Masses, especially on holidays. A deacon, who was a family friend, baptized their sons. Yet attending church at this point wasn’t a priority in their lives.

On the day before Easter 2025, the Carmodys ran into Joe and Julie Lindloff at a local brewery, which was hosting a children’s concert that day. Joe is the pastor at Anchor. This wasn’t their first time running into each other. Julie and Sarah had met several times at the local library and other kids’ events. The Lindloffs asked the Carmodys what they were doing for Easter and invited them to check out Anchor.

On the way home, Sarah expressed interest in going. “I wasn’t really expecting Tony to say yes, to be honest, but he was like, yeah, sure, we can go,” says Sarah. “And we have been going every Sunday since.”

A new understanding of grace and the scriptures

The learning continued each Sunday, intensifying when they started taking the Bible Basics class during the week.

It reached its height during one class when Lindloff asked the class, “Who thinks they are going to heaven?” Sarah says she remembers getting increasingly upset as he went around the table asking each individual.

“I’ve always really tried to live my life as a good person and do right by everyone, do right by myself,” says Sarah. “I didn’t realize that by being a believer in Jesus, I am going to heaven. I thought that I had to prove myself.”

When Lindloff got to Sarah and she told him she didn’t know because she wasn’t sure if she had done enough, he told her, “That’s not how it works.”

That realization brought her to tears—not of sorrow but of joy. “Growing up, I just didn’t realize that no, you don’t have to prove yourself; Jesus really did die for our sins, and he truly does love you,” she says. “It’s just simple, a matter of fact; that’s what it is. My mind had twisted things so deeply. It was a very wild realization.”

Tony and Sarah continued growing in their faith each week in class and in church. They say that the class gave them the foundation and the building blocks of Lutheran doctrine, which were then expounded on in the weekly sermons.

They both admit that they weren’t very familiar with the Bible, which in the past sometimes made it difficult to follow along in church. “You’re trying to flip through the pages and the next thing you know, you’re not listening and you’re not understanding,” says Tony. “Joe uses a good variety of technology to make it easier for people to follow along in his sermon. There’s also always a connection, so it was easy to understand what he was preaching that Sunday.”

Sarah says that she is amazed that they are always learning new things each week about the Bible and doctrine. A main message, however, does repeat: “I do love how [Pastor Joe] just brings it back every time, just a driving message, that Jesus died for your sins. He loves you. You are forgiven,” she says. “I think that’s really healing for me to hear.”

A new purpose in life

Those are messages that Tony and Sarah also want their two sons, Carson and Asher, to know and believe.

Sarah says her dad told her a few years ago that his biggest regret was not raising her and her brother in a church and that as a mother she should want more for her kids. At the time, Sarah took it hard but then went on with her life.

Now she says she sees the wisdom in this statement. “After we started going to Anchor, we feel like we have a purpose. We feel like we’re really giving our boys such a great gift in knowing Jesus,” she says.

And they are amazed at how much they see their boys growing in their faith. “The sermons are presented in a way that even our four-year-old has come back and talked about it the next day,” says Tony.

Their boys also love seeing their church family, often asking why they don’t go to church more than once a week after the midweek Bible Basics classes concluded.

The close-knit family atmosphere was something that the Carmodys noticed immediately at that first Easter service. “Everybody was really welcoming. All the members and the families,” says Sarah. “You really could not tell who was an actual member and who wasn’t.”

She continues, “We just really love the community . . . and we’ve really gotten to know some great families. I think it’s fun because our kids will be like, ‘Are we going to go have dinner with our church family?’ It’s just not what I was expecting. I really wasn’t expecting to connect with people as much as we have.”

Those connections—both to their Savior and the family of faith—give the Carmodys another purpose: spreading the Word, and the word about Anchor.

“We invited another person, and then we invited another person, and then, yeah, we just keep inviting,” says Sarah. “I joke with Pastor all the time. I’m like, ‘You let me know when it’s too full and I need to stop inviting people.’ He’s like, ‘Keep inviting, keep inviting.’ ”

One of those people they invited was Sarah’s mom. She has started attending Anchor’s morning service, after she attends Mass. “She has said many times she likes to get the message a different way,” says Sarah.

Her father, who attends a Baptist church, also is happy that the Carmodys found a church home. “He loves that the boys are being raised in the faith,” says Sarah. “They talk about the Bible together, and I think that’s really cool.”

The Carmodys probably did not expect their lives to change dramatically after attending that first Easter service at Anchor. But the message they heard and the journey it took them on made an eternal difference.

Says Sarah, “I still stop to think about it sometimes. We’re going to heaven. Can you believe it? This is so cool. We just get to go.”

Author: Julie Wietzke
Volume 113, Number 10
Issue: October 2026
Image background: iStock

Relational evangelism

When Joe Lindloff arrived in Marquette, Mich., in 2023 to start a new mission, his goal was to share Jesus’ love and forgiveness with those in the community. But how do you get started doing that in a small, secular, unchurched town?

For Lindloff, it starts by getting to know the community. “We had no Bible study. There was no church. There was no building. We just put ourselves into places where people are—parks, libraries, walking the streets with strollers,” he says.

The goal is to meet people. “You’re going to see the same people over and over and over,” he says, noting that Marquette is relatively small—only 22,000 people. “What we believe in is many, many, many touches and building a relationship before the invite [to church] happens.”

He continues, “it is a long game, a relationship game, an ‘I need to see Jesus in you before I want to hear about Jesus from you’ type of thing.”

Lindloff says that Tony and Sarah Carmody are a perfect example of how relational evangelism works. Joe’s wife, Julie, and Sarah had interacted multiple times before that day at the brewery when the Lindloffs invited the Carmodys to church.

“I think they’re the perfect example of just being where people are, not pushing an agenda or an invite until it feels right (and you’ll know when it feels right), and then just trusting that God’s going to work through that,” says Lindloff.