About

Meet our Pastor

Pastor Fred  Nelson began as our part-time pastor at New Spirit in June 2020, and will be joined by his wife, Pastor Carol Breimeier, in August, when they will work together as our co-pastors.

Until he relocated to Tucson at the end of 2019 to focus on prison and reentry ministry, Fred was the lead pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church, a multisite congregation located in Park Ridge and Chicago, Illinois. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the Lutheran Church Planters Network, created to help train and network church planters across the country.

A former missionary in Bangladesh and an expert in Christian-Muslim relations, Fred has been involved in prison ministry since 2005 as a volunteer chaplain at Stateville Prison in Joliet, Illinois, including founding the Under the Door Prison Ministry, writing the Spiritual Survival Guide for Prison and Beyond, and crafting RED Chicago, a reentry directory for the Chicago area. He is the founder and executive director of the Inside Out Network, dedicated to crafting innovative solutions to connect returning citizens with service providers, churches, and ministries, as well as to connect those serving on the inside in prison ministry with those outside who are working on reentry challenges.

Because of Christ’s call and claim on his life, Fred sees himself fundamentally as a change-agent – an agent of Christ’s life-changing hope and joy – to everyone he meets, but especially to those who are feeling hopeless or disconnected. He has a passion for networking, coaching, hiking in the desert, and Indian food. Fred and his wife Carol have four grown sons between them.

He’s excited about what God can do in and through the people of New Spirit!