Helping People Flourish

The Rev. Dr. Jim Fruehling still remembers his first encounter with Martin Luther Homes when he was three-years-old.

A truck pulled into the driveway of the rural farm where he grew up in Iowa and his family loaded it up with donations for “the home.”

“‘Get out your clothes. Get out your green beans,’ they said,” Fruehling recalled. “I wasn’t sure what the home was at three, but I knew it was important.”

Jim’s grandfather, the Rev. William Fruehling, helped found Martin Luther Home (one of Mosaic’s legacy organizations), his dad, the Rev. Richard Fruehling, later served as chaplain. Jim’s uncle, the Rev. Walter Fruehling, served as director.

“This organization is in my DNA,” Fruehling said.

A psychologist and pastor, he has made sure to do as much as he can to ensure that people with disabilities were seen as beloved people of God, just like his father, uncle and grandfather did before him.

His work focuses on helping staff provide better mental health supports and educating seminary students and churches about the best ways to include people with intellectual disabilities in worship and church leadership.

He was ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 2014 in the K.G. William Dahl Chapel in Mosaic’s national office.

“It’s been this 40-year career that I wouldn’t change for anything,” he said.

Fruehling’s first stint with Mosaic was in the 1970s, when he spent time as a summer worker in high school and after college.

“I was a history and German major who didn’t know squat,” Fruehling said.

The defining moment of his career came when he was visiting at a state-run institution, where workers provided basic care for 80 people with profound disabilities.

While there a nurse said, “Nothing more can be done for these children.”

It was a memory that has stuck in Fruehling’s mind to this day.

“’There must be something that could be done,’ I thought,” he said.

Today, his deepest joy comes from seeing people with disabilities flourish, especially when they had not been given a chance before.

“In the future, I hope that the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities are recognized as profoundly and readily as their challenges,” he added.

This the second in a series of posts highlighting the work that Mosaic employees do to bring our mission to life. Read the first post here.