Gypsum’s Connect Church is growing into the community

The Bible tells us God created the world in six days. The Connect Church in Gypsum last year built a church building in three months. Still, that’s pretty impressive.

The church has been holding services for a few years, and now counts about 100 people as members. After starting in the basement of Pastor Hector Gonzalez’ home, the group balked at local rental rates, then found a lot and linked up with an organization called Church in a Day to build a structure.

First, though, the church needed to find land. Good fortune — or, perhaps, providence — came in 2019 when a sale contract fell through for a lot on Oak Ridge Court.

Then came plans for the building itself. Working with Church in a Day, plans were laid and skilled volunteer labor was brought in, including from Indiana, Texas and other states.

Gonzalez said the initial plan was to build the structure in just three weekends, but a handful of hangups, from supply chain issues to hiccups with town permits, stretched the process to three months. In all about 300 people participated in the build.

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Before the building…

But the Connect Church story starts before the first concrete was poured last year.

The Gonzalez family’s journey to Gypsum actually starts on the Front Range. Hector and Rachel Gonzalez and their two sons were living in Longmont. Rachel was a sales manager for a Front Range-based office equipment firm, and her territory ranged from Boulder to Glenwood Springs. That trip on Interstate 70 requires driving through Gypsum.

“I just felt a pull every time we drove through,” Rachel said. That pull turned into inviting her husband for a long weekend in Glenwood Springs.

The family moved in the fall of 2017.

About the same time, a family in Gypsum was praying for a pastor to come start a new church. The families linked through Bible study sessions in the Gonzalez home. Those sessions led to services, and the basement of the Gonzalez’ home over about three years was stuffed with about 60 people. It was time to find a new home for the group.

This is Hector’s first time as a lead pastor, but he came to the ministry and found Rachel at about the same time.

Hector was in the Navy, stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, when he met Rachel and her father when all three were doing volunteer work to build a church in that area.

For Hector, it was love at first sight. Rachel didn’t fall as quickly, but eventually decided she’d found her life partner. Rachel’s father is a minister, and that led Hector to the ministry. Connect Church is non-denominational, but Hector’s licensure is through the United Pentecostal Church.

Starting a church feels like a full-time job. So does raising sons who are 15, 10, and 2 years old. To buy groceries and pay the bills, Hector works in the Vail Health cardiac catheterization lab. Rachel runs the budding daycare center at the church.

Just the start

The church and daycare center are just the first parts of the congregation’s ambitious plans for the church.

The church offers Spanish language services on Sunday evenings. Hector, who was born and raised in New York City’s South Bronx area, acknowledged that his Spanish needed work before offering services for those parishioners, which now account for just less than half of the congregation.

Hector cited a scripture passage that encourages those who spread the word to be all things to all people, adding, “If the community was 25% to 30% German, I’d learn German.”

The mission of Connect Church is “Connecting you to God, His people and His purpose.” That means the church has to reach beyond the walls of the structure.

The church is ready to launch an immigration assistance service, and there are plans to open a school — a high school to start — by the 2023-24 school year.

All this is happening from a small building in what passes for the center of town.

“It’s not a mistake we’re in the center of this community,” Hector said, adding that because Gypsum is a small community, the church’s mission statement is “even more profound.”

The Gonzalezes say they’re in Gypsum to stay, but have higher hopes for the church they’ve helped create.

“We wanted something that will be in this community long after we live,” Hector said.