What could be better than serving as a North American Mission Board missionary in picturesque Colorado Springs? After all, the city of 380,000 backs up to the base of snow-capped, 14,000 feet-tall Pikes Peak on the edge of the Rocky Mountains.
Money and Outside magazines have both deemed it as No. 1 on the list of the best places to live in the United States. It’s perceived as a Christian “mecca” and nicknamed “The Evangelical Vatican” because so many evangelical Christian organizations are headquartered here – Focus on the Family, The Navigators, the International Bible Society and Young Life, just to mention a few.
Colorado Springs is a military stronghold, the location of the Army’s Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Schriever Air Force Base, NORAD and the United States Air Force Academy.
The 6,000-foot high city is headquarters to the U.S. Olympic Committee, the U.S. Olympic Training Center, and the national sports federations for Olympic bobsledding, fencing, figure skating, basketball, boxing, cycling, judo, hockey, swimming, shooting, triathlon, volleyball and wrestling.
The Colorado Springs area is also a vast wilderness of “lost” souls. Just ask Bill and Carol Lighty.
Bill, 53, serves as a NAMB national missionary and director of missions for the Pikes Peak Baptist Association, which includes about 50 Southern Baptist churches and church plants. In a metro area of more than 600,000, 83 percent – some 500,000 -- never darken the door of a church -- any church.
“God really broke my heart over the lostness of the Pikes Peak region,” says Lighty, who – with his wife of 32 years, Carol – has worked in his current assignment two and a half years. Prior to that, he spent almost 21 years as pastor of Chapel Hills Baptist Church in Colorado Springs. The Lightys have two grown daughters, Trisha and Ashley, and two granddaughters.
Lighty is one of some 5,300 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions. He is among the North American Mission Board missionaries featured as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 7-14, 2010. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Share God’s Transforming Power.” The 2010 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $70 million, 100 percent of which benefits missionaries like Bill Lighty.
Although Lighty says Mormonism and Catholicism are both strongly entrenched in the Colorado Springs area, “there’s half a million people here who don’t know Christ.”
In addition to Pikes Peak, another of Colorado Springs’ famous landmarks is the “Garden of the Gods,” so-called because when it was named in 1859, it was described as a “place fit for the assembling of the gods.” Lighty said this focus on the mythical gods – but not on the one true God – is symptomatic of many of the residents of the Colorado Springs area.
“In a very real sense, Colorado Springs is not godless because the people here have a lot of gods they worship,” he says. “Some worship nature and the mountains. Some worship skiing. Some worship the metaphysical. Spiritualism is a big element of our culture, and we have a strong Wiccan movement. Some worship their motorcycles. With five military installations here, many worship the military and the goal of getting promoted to the next rank.
“So our challenge is competing with all these other gods plus the mountains – where there’s something to do 12 months out of the year -- in order to help people worship the one true God versus their multiple gods,” Lighty says.
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