New Beginnings Worshipping Community and Cowboy’s Closet
April 2026 Second Offering Sunday (SOS)
“Our mission is to restore shattered lives to wholeness through the love of Jesus
Christ.” - New Beginnings Worshipping Community
Last year, Pastor Samm Melton visited LOTM to share greetings and stories from the
New Beginnings Worshipping Community, a Lutheran mission church that holds regular
in-person worship services inside the Denver Women's Correctional Facility. Pastor
Samm’s words were simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking – reminders all of our
call to “remember those who are in Prison, as though you were in Prison with them.”
Hebrews 13:3. LOTM responded throughout the Fall with dedicated donations for
Cowboy’s Closet, a New Beginnings Project that provides support for women leaving
prison, often with less than $300 in available resources to start a new life.
This year, New Beginnings and Cowboy’s Closet have been added to the ministries
supported by LOTM’s Second Offering Sunday. Like LOTM, New Beginnings
welcomes all -but unlike LOTM, New Beginnings and Cowboy’s Closet must rely upon
funding from outside sources, including private donations and grants and
Congregations, like LOTM, that are moved by the ministry.
April is our opportunity at LOTM to provide SOS financial support to New Beginnings.
Monetary donations, or gift cards for Wal-Mart are especially welcome. They also are
especially impactful - New Beginnings parishioners are five times less likely to return to
the Correctional Facilities population within one year after release than the general
women’s population.
Our hope too is for this partnership to continue and grow. A box for Greeting Cards will
be available in the narthex, outside the sanctuary, where we can donate cards for New Beginnings
parishioners to use to maintain connections with their families, and to uplift one other -
luxuries of word that we so often take for granted.
So, THANK YOU, LOTM for remembering those who are in prison, the marginalized
where our support is needed, appreciated and the impacts are life changing.
