{"id":23729,"date":"2025-02-04T17:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-02-05T00:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lighthouse-baptist-church-reaches-out-to-students-as-part-of-make-a-difference-campaign\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:41:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:41:47","slug":"lighthouse-baptist-church-reaches-out-to-students-as-part-of-make-a-difference-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/lighthouse-baptist-church-reaches-out-to-students-as-part-of-make-a-difference-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Lighthouse Baptist Church reaches out to students as part of \u2018make a difference\u2019 campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Along
Along with its sidewalk ministry at Montezuma-Cortez High School and support of Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Lighthouse Baptist Church is launching a 10-week community service project under its 2025 theme to \u201cmake a difference.\u201d (Reece Alvarez\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Lighthouse Baptist Church, 11502 Colorado Highway 145, shared initiatives that are part of its 2025 theme \u2018to make a difference,\u2019 including student outreach and helping those in need.<\/p>\n

In mid-October of 2024, Lighthouse youth Pastor Reece Alvarez was running errands at Walmart when he saw a \u201cswarm\u201d of high school students flooding into the building for their lunch break.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018Man, this is a lot of people,\u2019\u201d Alvarez told The<\/em> Journal<\/em>. \u201cI thought, \u2018Hey, this is a pretty cool opportunity to catch them as they\u2019re coming in to be a blessing to them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The following Wednesday, Alvarez and others from the church set up a table on the sidewalk between Montezuma-Cortez High School and Walmart with free doughnuts for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat first day, we ordered 12 dozen doughnuts from City Market, and we handed out doughnuts,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cIt was really just intended to be a one-and-done kind of thing, but it was so well-received we were like, \u2018Hey, this is something we could do every week.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, Alvarez said the students didn\u2019t seem to know what to think about their presence on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n

After three weeks, students have gotten over their initial surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe second Wednesday we did it, it was still kind of a surprise, but by the third week, it was more of an anticipation thing,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cI think every Wednesday, they expect us to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n

While students usually dash into Walmart for lunch, Alvarez shared they have conversations with some of the \u201cstragglers.\u201d They also invite the students to participate in a youth group.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found that those are some good times to start up conversations, and not necessarily to shove religion down their throat, but to kind of connect with them and see where they\u2019re at in their walk with God and just in life,\u201d Alvarez said.<\/p>\n

Alvarez also is a consistent presence at Fellowship of Christian Athlete meetings at MCHS and the Dolores RE-4A school district. About 60 students attend in Dolores, and seven or eight at MCHS.<\/p>\n

Last year, all clubs at MCHS were barred from hosting on-campus meetings at lunchtime. Now, Alvarez meets with students before or after school or during lunch on Wednesday. Cold weather has made meeting difficult or deterred some students.<\/p>\n

Recently, when the group met in the Walmart parking lot at lunch, it was especially cold.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just kind of shivering in the snow,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cBut next week, or the week after, we\u2019re going to be getting an enclosed bus that\u2019s been gutted, with tables and stuff put in so we can meet in the bus at the Walmart parking lot during lunchtime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alvarez shared that the main leader of Cortez\u2019s FCA is acquiring use of the bus.<\/p>\n

Alvarez also spoke of the church\u2019s new initiative, Compassion in Action, which will start the first week of March and will end on the National Day of Prayer in May.<\/p>\n

Compassion in Action will take place through 12 groups of 10 to 15 people per group. On Sunday, Feb. 23, groups and their leaders will discuss what kind of projects they want to do to bless the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really up to the small groups what service project they want to do,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe have a list of people in our church that are elderly and widows, so they may come to us and say they want to clean a widow\u2019s house, and we can connect them to those widows.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other projects include helping businesses clean their windows, mowing lawns for the elderly and widows, and writing letters to teacher and law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Alvarez added that he hopes some of the projects will \u201corganically pop up\u201d through contact through their Facebook ads or as the groups begin to go out into the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Facebook, we\u2019ll have ads, and that will typically have a point of contact that says, \u2018Hey, if you know somebody who needs their gutters cleaned who can\u2019t do it, call the church office at (970) 565-9302,\u2019 and honestly, word-of-mouth spreads pretty quickly,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe\u2019re ordering T-shirts for everyone involved, so on any given weekend, there could be a random group of people in these matching shirts doing something. Conversations will start, and hopefully service projects will organically pop up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The purpose of this initiative is to help out and build relationships in the community.<\/p>\n

Alvarez said the scale of the project is new for the church, and will present many opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the theme this year for our church is making a difference, and we don\u2019t want to just say make a difference without giving the people in our church and ourselves opportunities to make a difference,\u201d Alvarez said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

holds a weekly sidewalk ministry near MCHS and is hosting a spring community service project<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,21,28,60,29,407],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-community","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-religion-and-belief"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78236,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23729\/revisions\/78236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23729"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}