Friday night, June 4, 2021, Lakewood Connects Executive Director Reg Cox and his wife Amy attended the celebration of 64 years of a Lakewood church, Hope Crossing, at their closing service. Reg serves as a mentor supporting pastors and churches so they can thrive… so, you might rightly ask, “how is this church closing a good thing?”

Pastor Matt Ellis, his wife Carrie, and family had been brought in to “transition” an older church to a new vision and future!  Transitioning Churches (older churches with a new pastor, worship style, and ministry plan) face a high risk of failure. Pastor Ellis and his leaders knew this as they started 12 years ago but things looked good as the church grew for 8 years. But over the past 2 years and through the pandemic a combination of trials converged on Matt and the church, and they realized that they had very little chance to move forward to a place of “thriving.” The decision was made to close Hope Crossing and sell the building, hopefully to another church. 

In April, the Hope Crossing leaders met with another church who needed a building. That church enjoys 250+ active members and shares the vision and core theological values of Hope Crossing. The building was sold to this church at an affordable price. Why? Because it never was about Hope Crossing or Pastor Ellis; it has always been about loving our neighbors and advancing the good of the community. Period.

The event that Friday night brought Reg and Amy to tears as story after story of changed lives were shared. The impact of Hope Crossing will be a testimony of God’s goodness and mercy for generations to come! In fact, the church lives on right now inspiring every church in the city!

But there’s something else you should know; in May, Matt lost his left eye during a routine surgery. So in one week Matt lost his eye, his job, his church and what can feel like his life’s purpose. But the bigger story isn’t about a lost eye or a church ending; it’s a story of a pastor, his family, and church that put the needs of their community first! This is a hard path, but it is the only path that leads us to become what church, faith, and community must become!

Thanks for supporting pastors like Matt and churches like Hope Crossing by supporting Lakewood Connects. Together we are rewriting the story of how faith can affect the greater good in a community and in our world! 

Holy Shepherd Lutheran Church has been meeting on Kipling Street on the edge of an older Lakewood neighborhood for over 60 years and is comprised of older members who share a long history of worship, service, and love. What you need to know about them is that the positive impact of the church reaches far beyond their neighborhood with an energy surpassing the youngest churches in our community! 

For decades the church has “adopted” their neighborhood school, Eiber Elementary. Eiber students primarily come from families who receive government assistance, and the pandemic has been especially hard on them and their teachers. The educators were tasked with developing online curriculum, remote learning strategies, and handling dual class teaching situations… all new tasks, and they pulled this off in a short turnaround window! Nothing like this has happened in our lifetime and for educators the responsibility for the future success of an entire generation was laid on their lap!

In order to show appreciation for these incredible teachers, one of the members of Holy Shepherd made 50 hand embroidered tea towels and crocheted dishcloth sets for every staff member. These towels were distributed during “teacher appreciation week” along with a note signed by the members and staff of Holy Shepherd. It matters to have your sacrifice and hard work noticed and, we are all indebted to this church for making such a powerful statement representing the appreciation or our entire community!

It’s not the size, location, or age of a church or its member that really matters… what matters is figuring out what resources you have that could bless others in your community and then taking initiative to go to any length to translate the love we feel into the love others experience! That is a lesson we can all learn from Holy Shepherd… an old church that was able to make young hearts soar to new heights of joy!

Mission 98 partners with churches to share the compassion and good news of Jesus with people in motels, mobile home communities, and apartment communities in the Lakewood-Denver metro area.  One of the reasons I was excited to join the team at Mission 98 is a conversation I had with LuAnn Turner, Mission 98’s Founder and now-retired Executive Director. “Mission 98 is here to serve churches,” she told me. It took me a minute to digest that statement but the significance of it quickly sank in.  Mission 98 is a para-church ministry. As a former Lead Pastor, I was familiar with para-church ministries—often very good ministries—who approached me looking for volunteers or financial support. I get it. They were doing good ministry, and they needed volunteers and funding to keep doing it. 

But here was LuAnn turning that expectation on its head. Mission 98 doesn’t partner with churches so that churches can contribute to their ministry. They partner with churches to help them flourish in their ministry. So they
approach church leaders not asking for volunteers and funding—but asking how they are doing and how Mission 98 can support their ministry. Mission 98’s ministry is grounded in relationships, and that includes the churches that they partner with. 

There are two general ways they partner with churches. If a pastor wants to encourage his or her people to serve beyond the walls of the church and see how God is at work in the community, they can provide opportunities for people to serve and catch a vision for ministry in the community. As they serve in ministries such as kids clubs, teen nights, community meals, clothing ministry and special holiday events, they will get a taste of sharing the love and gospel of Jesus in relationships and there’s a good chance they will get hooked! They will get to know, love, and respect people who are different from them and that, too, will enlarge their vision of how God is at work in the world. They will also learn some simple but effective ways of caring for neighbors and sharing the gospel that can translate to many different ministry settings. People who serve with Mission 98 will raise the temperature of their church’s mission and outreach.

The second way Mission 98 partners with churches is when a church wants to reach out to people in a specific motel, mobile home park or apartment community. Mission 98 loves this because they believe God calls every church to reach out to love their neighbors and share the good news of Jesus. They think the best way they can help a church succeed in this ministry is in an ongoing equipping relationship. Mission 98 can share some vision, strategies, and lessons-learned from years of reaching out to people in apartments, mobile homes, and motels. They’ll invite that church to come and visit the ministries to help them develop their own vision. Fundamentally, they believe in the local church and we are more interested in seeing ministry multiply in local churches than they are in building up the ministry of Mission 98.

For more info about Mission 98: contact Fred Elliot-Hart or visit Mission 98’s website.

Mission 98 is a key partner in reducing suffering in Lakewood! 

Mission 98 partners with churches to share the compassion of Jesus with people in motels, mobile homes, and apartment communities in Lakewood through connecting residents with programs, resources, and relationships that transform their lives in positive ways. For years Mission 98 has linked churches to neighbors in need in April a group of fathers and their High School senior sons visited and Lakewood Connects, Reg Cox put them to work delivering furniture to a grandmother in Section 8 housing who was raising her 3 grandchildren. During the pandemic the needs of the most fragile community members increased dramatically. Thousands of people who never needed support found themselves without work, short on rent, out of food and struggling with transportation issues they have never experienced before. Elementary aged students in this mix suffered the most and the video here gives a glimpse into the connecting and partnership building role Lakewood Connects takes to link Mission 98 to churches in our city. Collaboration reduces suffering and when we lower suffering, everyone in our community wins!