BROOKINGS — Strategic planning began six years ago. At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, May 4, 2026, the ground was broken: the Built on the Rock Ministry Expansion project at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Brookings was underway.
“What is our purpose in this place?” asked the Rev. Matt Wurm, Mount Calvary pastor, looking back six years to that planning. “It was a crucible; but out of that crucible came the answer: Our purpose in this place, No. 1, is to preach Christ and him crucified to all people, where we are planted; and we are planted just a block away from the university. It was revealed to us and gave us greater confidence to say: We’re here for the benefit of the community of Brookings, especially the community of SDSU (South Dakota State University.”
Wurm, 13 years as pastor, was born and raised in Cheboygan, Wisconsin. He had an early introduction to Brookings and the church he now shepherds. He attended seminary in St. Louis. His third year in seminary, called a vicarage, a sort of internship, was at Mount Calvary, “for the purpose of campus ministry.”
“I met my wife Kyra (Anderson) while I was here,” the pastor noted. “We started dating, got engaged, and then we were married.” His first call to ministry was Bemidji, Minnesota, where he served for five years. The couple had two children there. After coming to Brookings where they had four more. Their six children’s ages range from one turning 16 years old in July to 6-year-old twins.
Facilitating the facility
“Part of the project is facility expansion,” Wurm explained, giving a brief of the project, from its genesis to the present, noting the good, the bad and the ugky — and interjecting some tongue-in-cheek humor along the way. “We’ve been thinking about and knowing that we needed to do something for the facility for roughly 15 years.
“There have been many meetings and many conversations and four architects that we have engaged with along the road; because we would form a committee and get some feedback for what the needs of the facility would be in order to facilitate the facility. We kind of went in circles for a number of years and contracted with an outfit out of the Twin Cities three years ago. They ended up going bankrupt; they notified us that they went bankrupt the week that we kicked off our capital campaign for their plan. They were going to be the architect and the builder.”
The pastor called the outcome “quite a formidable challenge” but “grateful that we didn’t break ground before they went bankrupt. They were great to work with, but their finances were upside down.”
God’s guiding hand
The planners next stop was Dakota Land Design: “They’ve been fantastic to work with,” Wurm said. “They understand the codes, our expectations and the needs that the City has, because we’re in a historic district. … Lots of discussions and lots of meetings, but at the end of the day, our plans were approved.”
“Looking back on it, I think it was God’s hand guiding us through what we thought was a terrible thing, the end of the road,” the pastor said, smiling. “The week that we kick off the capital campaign, and the architect that we planned with goes bankrupt. All that vanishes and we didn’t know what we were going to do.”
But they soldiered on. The original church was built in 1950. It was added on to in 1959 and again in 1997. The present project is the building of a new sanctuary that will double the square footage of the present sanctuary.
In 2028, Mount Calvary will celebrate its 100th Anniversary. Wurm is hoping to mark the occasion with a celebration service. He noted that for more than 75 years, since the late 1940s, the church has had a dedicated “campus ministry” for the students at South Dakota State University (and its predecessor, South Dakota State College of Mechanic Arts). That dedicated campus ministry has driven decisions that keep the church close to the SDSU campus. However, Mount Calvary has much wider appeal farther from home.
Building future church leaders
Looking to the church’s geographical draw, the pastor noted: “The radius of our congregation members is about 45 miles. On a Sunday, we have 190 people on average, goes up and down. During the school year, about 30 college students (on a Sunday). The students who come to Mount Calvary, they’re going to be church leaders in their own right. They’re going to serve on boards, serve as Sunday school teachers.”
Funding for the $5.5 million project, coming from congregation members and donors. “We have a capital campaign. A year-and-a-half into that we’ve received 80 percent (of that).” Some of that money we had saved from resources already; a good portion is committed to the capital campaign and through loan financing –– with the hope that more money will come in through campaign work.”
“We need more space to gather for worship,” Wurm noted. “Some Sundays we do not have enough space for people in our current sanctuary. We don’t have enough space to eat together. Our fellowship hall is in the basement. It’s just not that accessible. The current sanctuary will turn into the fellowship hall, with the kitchen and bathrooms right off of it.
“This is a church that will have been added onto three distinct times. But now everything will be on the same level. There are going to be no steps, no ramps. You come in the front door, same level as the communion rail, same level as the bathrooms. There will be no basement in the new addition.”
“A big part of this (project ) was just having a facility that’s accessible to facilitate the ministry to the campus, to the elderly and also to our community,” the pastor noted. “There are so many things that we wanted to do in terms of life together, fellowship together for the community. Now that we’ll have a kitchen and bathrooms and fellowship hall that are accessible, we will have more opportunity for ministry in our community, which is the campus community.”
— Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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