What Does “Solheim” Mean?
There is a photograph of me standing on the Solheim glacier in Iceland, back turned to the camera, walking toward a wall of snow and rock that has been there longer than any institution I have ever served. The sky that day was the kind of blue that only shows up in cold, dry air. The wind moved steadily across the ice. And in that quiet, enormous place, I asked God for guidance.
headed to the glacier!
I was not on that glacier looking for a company name. I was there because I needed to hear something clearly, away from the noise of church calendars, capital campaign deadlines, and the steady hum of ministry work that had filled twenty years of my life. I had spent two decades sitting with congregations as they wrestled with generosity, with fear, with hope, and with the deep spiritual questions that always sit underneath a capital campaign, whether anyone names them out loud or not. I loved that work. I still do. But something in me knew it was time to step into it differently, and I did not yet know what that meant.
So I went to Iceland, and I walked out onto the ice.
There is something about a glacier that strips away pretense. It does not care about your five year plan. It does not care about your fundraising goals. It simply is, ancient and patient and enormous, shaped slowly over time by forces far larger than any single decision. Standing there, cold air filling my lungs, I felt the kind of clarity that rarely comes in a conference room or during a strategy session. It came instead in stillness, in openness, in a posture of listening rather than planning.
That is where the call came. Not as a business idea, but as an invitation. Anthropic language aside, I mean this plainly: I believe God spoke into that moment and set me on the path toward forming this company and this ministry. The generosity work I had done for congregations across the country was not finished. It was only beginning a new chapter, one where I would lead it myself, grounded in the same conviction that has shaped my whole career. Discernment comes before execution. Culture comes before mechanics. People come before pledges.
When it came time to name what I was building, there was really only one choice. Solheim means home of the sun in Old Norse, and it is the name of the glacier where I stood that day and finally understood what I was being asked to do. Naming the company Solheim Stewardship was my way of keeping that moment close. Every time I say the name, I remember the wind, the cold, the silence, and the sense that something much bigger than my own ambition was at work.
I think about that glacier often now, especially in the middle of a busy season with congregations preparing for commitment weekends or boards weighing whether to move forward with a campaign. The work can get loud. Timelines press in. Numbers start to feel like the whole story. And then I remember standing on that ice, and I am reminded again why I do this work in the first place. Stewardship, at its heart, is not about dollars raised. It is about people discovering what they were made to be generous with, and communities discovering what they were called to build together.
That is the heart behind Solheim Stewardship, and it started on a glacier in Iceland, in the cold and the quiet, with a simple prayer for guidance.
If your congregation is praying for guidance about what comes next, I would be honored to join you on that journey.
