You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

—Matthew 5:14-16

 

Two years ago, director Christopher Nolan released his highly anticipated film Oppenheimer. Millions of people across the globe flooded into theaters over the opening weekend to hear the tale of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the origins of the weapon that brought a sudden end to the devastation of World War II. To this day, Los Alamos, where Oppenheimer and his colleagues developed the first nuclear weapon, continues as a community of scientists and engineers working on critical government projects at the National Laboratory located there.

Where is God in Los Alamos?

From a bird’s-eye view, Los Alamos seems like the perfect community. Almost everyone who lives there works at the National Laboratory, meaning most people are well-educated and very well-off financially. Sadly, these truths only serve to mask the reality of the spiritual darkness the town grapples with. The local high school faces drug problems, suicides devastate the community, and most critically, many scientists’ naturalist views of the world cause them to reject Christ. This all begs the question: Where is God in Los Alamos?

 

 

Igniting The Light

In the late 1990s, Pastor Mark Lincoln was shepherding a handful of families in a small independent Bible church in Los Alamos. He soon learned that a nearby Christian and Missionary Alliance church found itself without a lead pastor and needed some help, so he volunteered to occasionally fill in on Sundays. Before long, the two churches realized a common call to reach their city and began to explore the possibility of a merger.

Pastor Mark recalls, “One of the texts that was pivotal to me was John 3:30, where John the Baptist, referring to Jesus, said, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease.’  It’s about having a Kingdom perspective about why we’re here and what we’re trying to accomplish. Our distinctiveness needed to be about more than just our small version of a church. We needed to view ourselves from a broader Kingdom perspective. If these two small congregations came together, would we be more effective in our own community and then globally?” After more than a year of deliberation, the elders of the respective churches answered Pastor Mark’s question with a resounding “Yes!”

“There wasn’t a ‘them or us’ kind of mindset. We changed the name of the church and started meeting together after almost a year of prayer and exploration.”

Although some churches may have horror stories of mergers gone awry, the union that birthed Crossroads Bible Church quickly drew the two communities into one. As church administrator Kirk Christensen put it, “It just didn’t seem like it was very long afterwards that the individual distinctions were lost. There wasn’t a ‘them or us’ kind of mindset. We changed the name of the church and started meeting together after almost a year of prayer and exploration.” Following the merger, the new church grew quickly, initially holding two weekly worship services. However, as growth continued, it became clear that Crossroads would need three services to accommodate its growing body of worshippers. Pastor Mark describes some of the challenges with their current facility at that time. “Our foyer was just a zoo on Sundays. You couldn’t even really walk through it. And we only had four bathroom stalls in the entire facility.”

 

 

Stewarding Every Square Inch

The church was bursting at the seams, so the leadership turned their attention to the property on which it rested. As Pastor Mark describes, “We were sitting on some property that wasn’t being used, and that kind of stirred up this vision to fully utilize what the Lord has provided over these many years. So we began to ask, ‘How can we steward the entire property in the best possible way?’”

“We wanted a facility that was really multi-purpose, multi-use from the beginning. We wanted to maximize every square foot of what we had—not for ourselves but for the community at large.”

In Los Alamos, property is extremely expensive, and the National Laboratory occupies a large amount of space in the area. Because of the classified nature of the work taking place at the National Laboratory, security clearances are required to access most buildings, making them “off limits” to non-employees. As a result, the community lacks adequate facilities to gather and host events. Crossroads recognized this reality as an opportunity to fill that need in the community. As Kirk noted, “We wanted a facility that was really multi-purpose, multi-use from the beginning. We wanted to maximize every square foot of what we had—not for ourselves but for the community at large.”

 

 

Overcoming Hurdles

With the help of a loan from Orchard Alliance, the church made the decision to construct a new building. Initially, Pastor Mark and Kirk expected the project to take about a year, but unforeseen challenges—like the 2007-2008 financial crisis and resulting housing bust that severely impacted the construction industry— significantly extended the timeline. “We got caught up in the tail end of that,” recalls Kirk, “There were shortages of resources, strict building code requirements, and issues with the sub-contractors, so it dragged on.”

“We always saw that it’s a tool for ministry, but we never made that the real focal point of ministry, it was still just continuing on, proclaiming, teaching the Bible Sunday after Sunday.”

As the building project continued for several years beyond their initial expectation, the mounting challenges required Kirk and other church leaders to manage the building project themselves. Despite these hurdles, Crossroads always kept the building project in a balanced perspective. “We always saw that it’s a tool for ministry, but we never made that the real focal point of ministry,” noted Pastor Mark, “It was still just continuing on, proclaiming, teaching the Bible Sunday after Sunday.” Seven years after the project began, the Lord rewarded the faithfulness of the people at Crossroads with the long-awaited completion of their new building.

 

 

Building Impact

Immediately, Crossroads set out to use its property to forge a meaningful, impactful presence in their community. They offered their space for the people of Los Alamos to use, and were flooded with requests. “We had some vision for that,” Pastor Mark recalls, “but I don’t think we were at all prepared for the scope and the amount of it, which was great.” Now, Kirk estimates that the church hosts over a hundred events per year, with hundreds – if not thousands – of people coming through the doors on a yearly basis. The church hosts concerts, craft fairs, school banquets, blood drives, and many other events that bring people together. Even the National Laboratory itself uses the space.

 

 

Kirk noted that it is not uncommon for people to have heard of the church simply because they went to an event there. “If we look back in three years and the building looked exactly like it did when we first started, it means we’re probably not using it the way God intended. We have to recognize that when you combine our church activities with the events hosted from within the community, there’s going to be lots of wear and tear, and things are not going to look the same. And well, I can tell you, it sure doesn’t look like the day we moved in.”

It was more about what God was doing in our community and how Orchard could partner with us to help make it happen.

Ultimately, the wear and tear on the building demonstrates God’s faithfulness in using Crossroads to shine a light in the spiritual darkness of Los Alamos. The church’s partnership with Orchard Alliance provided the financial backing needed to pursue the new building project. Discussing the loan, Kirk explained, “It just didn’t have the feel of going to a bank to show our profit/loss statement and all our business financials to try to prove that we qualify. It was more about what God was doing in our community and how Orchard could partner with us to help make it happen.”

Recently an anonymous donor in the congregation offered a matching challenge to the church, and the congregation responded strongly. So, this May with this gracious giving in-hand Kirk, along with his wife, Gretta, made the trek up from Los Alamos to Orchard Alliance’s main office in Colorado Springs to make the church’s final loan payment in person, enabling the entire Orchard team to celebrate this notable milestone together. With the loan now paid off, Crossroads is looking forward to making an even greater impact in its neighborhoods and the nations. The new building demonstrates how a church can maximize its resources to show God’s love and care to its community and reflect His heart to flood the darkness with His splendor and light.

 

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Orchard Alliance thanks our investors for making ministries like this possible. Your investments fund the loans that enable and empower congregations like Crossroads Bible Church to shine brightly in spiritually dark places.