AURORA, Colo. (BP)—Mike Alexander never attended seminary. He never had served as pastor of a church. He didn’t even know what a church planter did—that is, until he became one.
Mike Alexander welcomes guests to Living Hope Fellowship, a church he started after seeing the need while on a mission trip. The Aurora, Colo., church plant is a part of Send North America: Denver, the North American Mission Board’s strategy to help Southern Baptists plant churches in metro Denver. (Photo by Erik Stenbakken/NAMB)About two years after arriving in Aurora, Colo., and about 23 months after he began learning what church planters do, the church Alexander started has baptized more than 60 people.
The retired Texas teacher visited Aurora on a mission trip in the summer of 2012. During the trip, 16 children began a relationship with Christ. As exciting as that was, Alexander couldn’t help but wonder where those children—all from one mobile home community in the town—would be discipled through a local church.
“There wasn’t anyone out here to disciple them, to move them along,” Alexander said. “That really touched my heart. I overheard the manager of the (community) talking to someone else on our team, saying ‘What we need is an older couple to come here and live here and minister to the people.’
“My wife and I are ex-schoolteachers, and we could do that,” Alexander told the manager.
“Well, come on,” the manager told Alexander with a smile.
Rosemary Alexander (right) teaches children as part of the ministry of Living Hope Fellowship, a new church plant in the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colo. Rosemary’s husband, Mike, started the church after retiring as a school teacher and administrator in Texas. On most weekends 35 to 40 people attend the worship service. (Photo by Erik Stenbakken/NAMB)What started with God gently tugging Alexander’s heart and a short exchange with the mobile home community manager soon became a full-fledged missionary call. In the next few days, he told his wife, Rosemary, who had stayed behind in Texas, what he believed God was telling him about moving to Colorado. He looked at the house he’d one day purchase. He also found his first ministry partner in the state.
“As I left the house, the first person I met was a guy named Jimmy,” Alexander said. “He’s a Native American with tattoos all over him.”
“What are you doing?” Jimmy asked Alexander.
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“Well, Jimmy, I think God wants us to move here to minister to this community,” Alexander said.
“If you do that, I’ll help you,” Jimmy said.
Eight weeks later, the Alexanders moved to Colorado. It wasn’t until he went to church planters’ training through the Colorado Baptist General Convention a few days after arriving in Aurora that he began to understand what it meant to be a church planter.
“I moved here to knock on doors and tell people about Jesus,” Alexander said.
Mike Alexander, who started Living Hope Fellowship in Aurora, Colo., hands out a turkey to a local resident during a Thanksgiving outreach. The Southern Baptist Global Hunger Relief Fund has helped Alexander provide food for needy neighbors as part of his outreach efforts. Alexander, a former Texas school teacher and administrator, started Living Hope to minister to the people of Foxridge Farm Mobile Home Park. (Photo by Erik Stenbakken/NAMB)Soon Alexander had a vision for building a church among the 481 units in the community. Six people—one family—attended the church’s first worship service in the couple’s home. Today, Living Hope Fellowship has 35 to 40 people in a typical worship service. Alexander says if everyone came at one time, the church’s attendance would be around 100.
“I never know who is going to be there,” Alexander said. “Most of the work happens one on one. It’s visitation. It’s talking to people. It’s taking the opportunity to visit. And then, you can’t just lead people to the Lord and leave them alone. There’s discipleship. There’s Bible study.”
Alexander has learned ministry never stops. Sometimes that means giving people rides to work. Sometimes that means buying a bag of groceries for a friend.
“Physical needs are really important here,” Alexander said. “This is not a rich community. This is a pretty low-income place. It’s hard to find a job, and if they find a job, they don’t have transportation.”
During the past two years, Alexander has become so identified with the community, even people not connected to his church come to him for pastoral needs, such as weddings. When one young couple wanted to get married last year, someone recommended they visit Alexander. As he sat down with them for premarital counseling before the first wedding he ever performed, he discovered the prospective groom never had committed his life to Christ.
“I’m not a Christian,” the young man told Alexander. “I’ve done terrible, terrible things. God doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true. God does love you,” Alexander said before opening up his Bible and taking him through the gospel. The young man became a follower of Christ and, for a couple of months before moving to San Diego, he and his wife were active members of the church.
Two years after answering God’s call to Aurora, Alexander knows what a church planter does—because he is doing it.
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