Nebraska Synod ELCA

When the Tyson meatpacking plant in Lexington announced its closure just before Thanksgiving, the news hit like a shockwave.

In a town of about 10–11,000 people, more than 3,000 workers were suddenly facing unemployment. Many had given decades of their lives to the plant. Many were immigrants. For their children, Lexington is the only home they have ever known.

“Here we are in the holidays,” says longtime Lexington resident and Grace Lutheran member, Mary Bergstrom. “The timing was horrid. All those families were just thrown into crisis.”

A Community Built on Welcoming the Stranger

Lexington has been adapting to change for nearly four decades.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a meatpacking plant brought a wave of new workers and families from around the world. Over time, the community learned how to welcome people whose first language was not English, whose educational backgrounds varied widely, and whose cultures added richness and complexity to a small Nebraska town.

The school district became, in Mary’s words, “the glue that held the community together.” Educators and staff developed strong English Language Learner (ELL) programs. Community members created coalitions like the Interagency Council so that human service agencies, medical providers, the schools, and others could coordinate instead of duplicating services.

“It has become our identity,” Mary says. “We are a global majority community with a rich culture of diversity. You walk into the school foyer and see more than 40 flags hanging from the ceiling, representing the countries of the students. That is who we are.”

That identity made the plant closure even more painful. It was not just jobs that were at risk. It was the future of a community that had spent decades learning how to welcome the stranger and celebrate diversity.

“How Are We Going to Handle This?”

On the Friday before Thanksgiving, plant employees were handed letters announcing the closure.

By the following Tuesday, staff from the newly formed Welcome Center, a partnership of the city, the hospital, and the schools housed in Lexington’s Opportunity Center, had organized a community meeting.

More than 80 community leaders showed up: school and hospital staff, social service agencies, city partners, and others. The question on the table was simple and overwhelming:

What are we going to do?

No single agency could carry the weight of suddenly displaced workers. Navigating unemployment portals is difficult even for fluent English speakers. For many plant employees, it was nearly impossible to manage alone. Housing, utilities, food, health care, every part of daily life was suddenly at risk.

The consensus was clear. If Lexington wanted to remain the diverse, vibrant place it had become, the community had to find a way to help families stay.

A “First Stop” for Help: The Lexington Relief Fund

Out of that urgency came the Lexington Community Relief Fund, administered by the Lexington Community Foundation. Though community foundations typically focus on long-term philanthropy rather than emergency aid, Executive Director Beth Roberts, a former school counselor trained in crisis response, understood what was at stake.

The goal of the Relief Fund was never to be the answer to every need. Instead, it was designed as a first stop. It aimed to:

• Provide small but immediate assistance for food, utilities, rent or mortgage, and health care, and
• Help families connect with the right longer-term resources without having to bounce from agency to agency in a time of deep fear and confusion.

The Nebraska Synod was among the early supporters. Nebraska Synod Disaster Response contributed $10,000 to the Lexington Community Relief Fund, joining hundreds of other donors who wanted to help.

“Nebraska Synod funds were one part of a much bigger effort,” Mary explains. “But they were part of what made it possible to even open the doors and say to people, ‘You are not alone. There is help here.’”

At first, intake was held at the Opportunity Center, across the street from the plant. On the very first day, people started lining up at 7:00 a.m. Workers had been told, “Go across the street. They will help you.”

Given the scale of need, the operation quickly outgrew the building. Intake had to be moved to the Dawson County Fairgrounds, where volunteers handed out numbers so families would not have to stand in the cold.

Each person or family who came through could receive:

• A grocery voucher (for example, $20 per person in the household)
• Limited assistance with utilities or housing (up to a capped amount)
• Direction to other resources for food, rent, medical care, and job support

“It was a Band Aid,” Mary says honestly. “But it was a vital Band Aid. It helped people breathe, even for a moment, and it connected them to what came next.”

For the volunteers taking intake, the emotional weight was heavy. They heard story after story of trauma, fear, and uncertainty. Yet those volunteers kept showing up, day after day, as an expression of their love for their neighbors.

How Nebraska Synod Disaster Response Shows Up

The Lexington story is one of many places where Nebraska Synod Disaster Response has quietly stepped in to equip local partners.

The synod does not keep a fixed annual disaster budget. Instead, as gifts come in from individuals, congregations, and partner organizations in Nebraska, across the United States, and even internationally, the synod listens for where the needs are and responds.

In recent years, Nebraska Synod Disaster Response has:

• Supported ongoing recovery from 2024 and 2025 tornadoes and ice storms in Nebraska
• Extended financial assistance to the Southwestern Texas Synod after catastrophic flooding
• Prepared to assist with wildfire recovery in western Nebraska as needs and requests emerge
• Worked alongside Lutheran Disaster Response, Nebraska VOAD, and other partners to coordinate efforts

Funds are almost always requested and distributed through congregations and local ministry partners, who know their communities best. That was true in Lexington as well, where trusted local relationships helped synod staff quickly identify the Lexington Community Foundation as the right hub.

“The synod does not parachute in with its own program,” Mary reflects. “It comes alongside what is already happening and strengthens it. That is exactly what happened here.”

The Wider Web of Care

The Relief Fund was one strand in a larger web of care:

• The Welcome Center served as a coordination point, helping residents navigate to the right agencies.
• The Department of Labor held job fairs and supported unemployment applications.
• The community college worked to create training pathways, such as OSHA certifications, to help workers transition into new industries.
• Lutheran Family Services secured a major grant from the Sherwood Foundation to provide additional direct assistance to affected workers.
• Congregations across denominations offered spiritual care, emergency help, and connection to local services.

At Grace Lutheran, where Mary worships, the congregation’s size and resources are modest. Yet they have leaned into what they can do, including hosting monthly “noisy offerings” matched by their endowment fund and directing those gifts to local agencies such as the food pantry, Heartland Family Partners, CASA, the ministerial association, and Lutheran Family Services.

“It multiplies the impact,” Mary says. “We are small, but we can still be part of the bigger picture.”

That bigger picture is precisely what Nebraska Synod Disaster Response invests in. It is not a single large program, but a network of faithful, local responses that together create resilience when disaster hits.

Waiting in the In Between

As of early spring, many questions in Lexington remain unanswered. Some families have moved away. Others are trying to commute to new jobs in nearby cities. Schools and agencies are bracing for changes that may not be fully visible until fall.

Mary describes the community as living in a kind of liminal space, a doorway between what was and what will be.

“You are standing in the doorway, looking back, still feeling the trauma,” she says. “And you are waiting for the unknown to be revealed.”

In that in between space, the signs of God’s presence are not in easy answers, but in people.

“I see God in all those volunteers and all those folks trying to keep their community together, to welcome the stranger,” Mary says. “We have spent decades choosing to be that kind of community. And in this crisis, you could see that choice again and again.”

Nebraska Synod Disaster Response was part of that choice. It was one gift among thousands that made it possible for Lexington neighbors to say to one another, in a very tangible way:

You are not alone. We will walk through this together.