A new path for old churches: Cloverdale
Cloverdale Church of God is a 60+yo neighborhood church in a gentrifying area of Lakewood, Colorado. For 10 years Michael and Tina Hooven have led this church to love their neighborhood by organizing community events, serve their local school and helping this aging church find ways to connect with their Hispanic neighbors. Just like many other churches across America, Cloverdale isn’t going to make it unless they make radical changes! The kind of change they need has to be profound, strategic and will require expertise and knowledge beyond their normal support networks. What should we do? We can’t afford to lose the building or the church community partnership momentum! In June 2024 Pastor Mike gathered a group of neighborhood pastors for prayer. For months they prayer-walked the neighborhood, sought God’s direction and tried to encourage Mike and his members as they sorted through various “next step” ideas and plans. At the same time just 5 miles away The Bridge Church at Bear Creek https://bridgebc.org/ is booming! They have the same passion and vision as Cloverdale and have been praying about “adopting” a struggling church and helping “re-plant” them to give them new life! August 10, 2025 Cloverdale and the Bridge Church formalized their path together. Cloverdale celebrated their 6 decade history and stepped into their future! The path ahead is risky but is being built upon prayer and partnership! (https://www.facebook.com/CloverdaleChurch/)
Lakewood Connects is proud to support churches like Cloverdale and the Bridge as they lean in to new strategies to advance faith in our modern age.
Pastors from 5 different churches praying for Cloverdale
CAFÉ
For over 18 years Lakewood Connects has helped Under-Served Schools identify community partners to support school activities, needs and programs. Today’s dual income parents face long work days, tough commutes and high financial stress. These parents lack the ability to be engaged in their student’s school and their school and student suffers as a result. What can we do in the local community to help the school thrive and the families reconnect to the school? Establishing partnerships between a community and their school requires building relationships with dozens of organizations and helping educators develop a year-long calendar of activities, volunteer and resource-need forecasting. Partnerships and support don’t “just happen!”
The “CAFÉ” model, developed by School Connect https://schoolconnectaz.org/cafe/ stands for; “Community and Family Engagement.” Using the “CAFÉ model,” School leaders invite dozens of local organizations; churches, service clubs and local businesses to a meeting where they’re introduced to the school culture, calendar and community then invited to pick from a list of volunteer or partnership activities that they want to partner with the school and support. Lakewood Connects supports several of these CAFÉ’s in Lakewood, Colorado. Long time “connection” work here has helped us build relationships with groups who we can recruit to join their local school’s CAFÉ! We have found that there are dozens of organizations unreached by the local school in their area yet want to help! Every year we find new ideas, improvements and innovations linked to creating thriving and flourishing for underserved communities and schools. The suffering in our communities is very often solvable when relationships are formed, a challenge is understood and a “together visioning” process is created! This is our future! This is our opportunity! This is something we are able to lead into because of your support! Thanks!
First CAFÉ meeting at Rose Stein Elementary!
Faith and Education
It is a common belief that Faith and Education have a tenuous if not caustic relationship. For the past 18 years Lakewood Connects has worked hard to dispel this misconception! We believe that local faith communities and churches are the “healing hub” for underserved schools! Last May we reported about the development of partnerships between Faith & Education.
That partnership continues to develop and we’re pursing help from our community and local churches for 3 main initiatives:
- Weekly Prayer Meetings with school principals
- Church Partnerships with school CAFÉ meetings (see the story on CAFÉ’s)
- Tutors for Whiz Kids https://www.whizkidstutoring.com/
Recently Lakewood Connects Executive Director, Reg Cox has made presentations to service clubs, church leaders and individuals in an effort to build new partners for these opportunities. You might call these meetings and partners “bridges” spanning the divide between Faith and Education. This divide doesn’t have to exist and, we believe, we can be part of building this bridge in our community!
Principal Michelle and office manager Blanca from Rose Stein Elementary at a recent prayer time.
When a church builds relationships with a local school and reaches beyond service into prayer we believe deep long lasting healing transformation is possible. Faith leader! We encourage you to become a “Healing Hub” in your community!
YIGBY
In most cities nationwide there’s an Affordable Housing Challenge. We know that many of our “downstream” societal problems like mental health, family degradation, personal debt and chronic social disconnections are related to the lack of affordable housing. When a family has affordable stable housing many of their life challenges diminish or disappear. In Lakewood our affordable housing shortage affects +2,000 households who currently overspend on housing, or are currently homeless or are making an untenable lengthy commute for work or school. We’re concerned about affordable housing for educators, first responders and law enforcement but we must also find housing solutions for every community member! How do we move forward on this challenge? We believe that Education + Communication about finding options to solve this challenge will help us find pathways for Community Transformation!
YIGBY means, “Yes in God’s Backyard.” It’s a conviction that faith must become a partner in finding solutions to this challenge! A first step in seeking solutions is partnering with experts, one of our faith based development partners is Abundant Ground https://www.abundantground.com/ Their expertise is making this dream a viable option in communities across the Front Range! Recently Lakewood Connects was honored to support our civic and faith leaders as they leaned into research and conversation around this topic at a recent YIGBY informative event at the Bridge Church at Bear Creek. At the event presenting and answering questions was Abundant Ground and one of our City Councilors. Over 50 faith and community leaders attended the event. When 1000’s of members of our community suffer we all suffer! Thanks for supporting our work to find solutions to suffering!
YIGBY community and Faith meeting at the Bridge Church at Bear Creek
Unity is our Hope and Healing Power!
For the past 20 years my passion has been focused on supporting the Lakewood Faith community’s response to the John 17 prayer of Jesus that his followers “be one.” “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. John 17:20-21 That support has led many of us into “unity building” activities such as Interfaith Coalitions, Government-Faith service projects, Public Education support and partnering with Business to improve community health. Faith unity is the launch pad for community healing.
Love Lakewood Weekend started Saturday 9/20 with Love Lakewood Day, a citywide day of service sponsored by Serve Spot Lakewood https://www.servespotlakewood.com/. On the Serve Spot website there are pictures and stories about the 20+ service projects.
Sunday 9/21 was Love Lakewood Sunday as +7 churches gathered for unified worship. The unified worship event began as Pastor Hoxworth from the Bridge Church at Bear Creek prayed for Mayor Wendi Strom and government leaders. Mayor Strom shared about our city’s needs and encouraged us to see all others in our community as “human beings.” What a poignant invitation to love and seek unity!
Pastor Schmitz of Westwoods Community Church preached Jeremiah 29 inviting us to make “love your neighbor” real by striving to “love our city with a costly love!” He challenged; “seek the wholeness and prosperity of others!” Together we “commit” to find and support those who are not prospering in our city!
Pastor Summers from Lakewood Vineyard ended the service inviting Educators for prayer. All of this felt significant and an answer to 20 years of prayerful efforts to remove the barriers that divide us. I believe our unity is key to national healing and removing suffering in our world. Thanks for supporting this vision!
Lakewood Connects 