Pastor Tomas Nyblom

Nyblom Family

Tomas Nyblom was born in Kokkola, Finland in 1964. He is the oldest of 6 children. He attended Swedish-speaking schools and graduated from Karleby Svenska Gymnasium in 1983. Although his primary language is Swedish, from living in a bilingual area of Finland he also learned Finnish. Finland requires that all able-bodied men serve in the military for at least 8 months, so he served in a mobile coastal artillery unit in Vaasa. He first met his future wife Mindy, at a mid-summer Lutheran church convention in Kalajoki, Finland, where she was visiting from the United States. Tomas soon moved to the United States where they were married in 1987 and lived in Rindge, N.H. until 1994, when they relocated to Greer, SC. Tomas worked in construction industries, specializing in site preparation, and later residential home building. In August of 1994 he attended a church’s men’s retreat and sensed a desire to learn more about God and his word, so Tomas and Mindy moved with their 3 young children to Hancock, MI where he attended the Inter-Lutheran Theological Seminary. After graduating in 1998, he served as pastor at the Eastside ALC congregation in Greer, until he founded the Vine Community Church with a core group in November of 2002. On the 27th of October 2006, in a tragic car accident, Tomas and Mindy lost the fourth of their five children, Moriah Mae; she was ten years old. Through this tragedy, Tomas and Mindy have continued to faithfully serve The Vine Community Church, and the church has shown steady growth since its inception.