November 9, 2025
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Across the street, Canvas Stadium roared as 30,000 fans in green and gold streamed in for Colorado State’s Saturday game. For two full days leading up to kickoff, volunteers had been overhauling the yard and deck of a modest, one-story brick-and-siding building that faces the stadium gates. It isn’t a sprawling fraternity house or a glossy campus center, just a simple home turned ministry hub. But for Christian Challenge, the collegiate ministry that owns it, its location could not be more strategic. Students pass it every time they head to kickoff.
The project list was long: removing grass, leveling soil, rebuilding a sagging deck, and assembling two pergolas that would soon shade conversations about faith. Volunteers also added outdoor cooking appliances, knowing that food has a way of drawing students in. And when kickoff came, the ministry hosted a game day cookout complete with a mechanical bull, offering a visible and inviting way to connect with students streaming toward the stadium.
As they worked, volunteers paused to notice students gathering in the garage for Bible study. Jeremy Cantrell, a project leader from SERVE Society in Elk City, Oklahoma, said, “We actually sat and watched a group of students have Bible study out in the little garage the first time we were here. All we could do is sit here and think of the days and weeks and years of the same thing going on in this space.”
Cantrell pointed to Hosea 10:12, which calls God’s people to “break up the hard ground of your hearts,” and saw the weekend’s labor as a living picture of the verse. “We were physically breaking up ground we didn’t even know would be part of this,” he explained. “God’s doing something, whether you are sharing the gospel or just laying your hands to something. Every bit of that mattered.”
For Christian Challenge FOCO, the upgrades weren’t about appearances. They were about creating a space that could hold late-night Bible studies, game day outreach, and ordinary moments of hospitality that might change the trajectory of a student’s life.
A Farm for New Beginnings
That sense of permanence carried across town to a very different project site. While the stadium crowds celebrated touchdowns, another group of volunteers was helping men at Harvest Farm take steps toward a different kind of victory.
Harvest Farm, a ministry of Fort Collins Rescue Mission, offers a nine-month residential program for men in addiction recovery. About 70 residents live there at a time, moving through work assignments in the kitchen, maintenance shop, or fields before entering life-skills classes and eventually holding full-time jobs offsite. The rhythm is designed to restore stability, dignity, and hope.
Send Relief teams joined that rhythm for the weekend. They painted peeling walls, repaired drywall, and scrubbed common spaces that had long been pushed down the priority list. Ben Palmerlee, who helps manage the program, admitted some of the tasks had been waiting for years. “It’s the kind of work that gets bumped down because it isn’t critical,” he said. “But when volunteers come and give a day like this, it lifts a weight. It reminds the guys that people care.”
For residents, the fresh paint and cared-for spaces weren’t cosmetic. They are signs that people see them and are rooting for their renewal. One man even asked a local volunteer to mentor him, a step that could shape his journey long after the weekend.
Derby Hill: A Church Replanted
In south Loveland, another story of renewal was taking root at Calvary Derby Hill Church. The church, originally founded in 1984, had faced decline until it joined the Calvary Family of Churches in 2017 and began a process of replanting. Pastor Dave Herre, a Colorado native who had also served overseas with the International Mission Board, now leads the congregation.
Calvary Derby Hill sits beside a Habitat for Humanity neighborhood. Herre had long envisioned a community garden that would give neighbors access to fresh produce and provide a simple way for the church to serve. Serve Tour volunteers, including 17 Send Relief Journeymen fresh off their annual retreat, spent two days building raised beds, installing a sprinkler system, and setting posts for a fence. “We want this to be more than a garden,” Herre said. “It’s a way for neighbors to connect, to share food, and to see the love of Christ in action.”
Inside the sanctuary, another crew pulled up worn carpet and laid new squares, brightening the space where the church gathers each Sunday. Herre described it as both practical and symbolic. “When you step into a room that’s been cared for, you feel welcomed. That matters for people who may be walking through the doors for the first time.”
Seeds in Schools and Streets
Not every Serve Tour project carried the visibility of a stadium-side ministry or the scope of a farm. Some were quieter but no less significant.
At Lopez Elementary, just blocks from Overland Church, volunteers spent two days refreshing the school’s outdoor nature area. They cleared and leveled the ground, built a pollinator garden, installed owl and butterfly boxes, put up signs identifying the plants, and set large boulders in place for teachers to use as seating.
Overland has been working to build relationships with parents and staff at the school, welcoming them to English classes at the church. The Serve Tour effort added another layer of trust, and the appreciation from the school was immediate. “When we came in for a break, they had bagels and juice and things for us,” said Phil White, a member of Overland and one of the project leaders. “Every one of these kids in school had drawn little pictures, and then they put them all together in a book. The school was so thankful for us showing up.”
At nearby Beattie Elementary, volunteers upgraded the playground, and the principal kept thanking the team, overwhelmed by their kindness.
About six miles north, families at Collins Aire Mobile Home Park gathered for a block party hosted by Iglesia Nueva Creación. The neighborhood, home to many Spanish-speaking residents, came alive with music, inflatable games, and plates of food served with care. Project leader Manny Maldonado described the atmosphere “like a family reunion,” as kids laughed and parents lingered in conversation with volunteers who had come simply to bless the community.
Other teams joined Forgotten Ministries for grill walks in additional mobile home parks. In this outreach, a large grill was mounted to the back of a pickup, which carried everything needed to cook and serve. Volunteers knocked on doors to let each household know lunch was being offered free of charge, and word quickly spread. Some residents even drove over from other parts of the park to find the grill. Jason Myers from Severance, Colorado, who helped lead one of the efforts, said what struck him most wasn’t the method but the openness it created. “We witnessed at least four full families accept Christ,” Myers said. “It’s not about the burgers. It’s about Jesus.” In total, more than 80 people prayed to receive Christ through grill walk conversations that weekend.
For 15-year-old Hunter Hebron from South Reno Baptist in Nevada, the openness became personal. On a grill walk, she offered a burger to a teenager about her own age and asked if she had ever given her life to Jesus. “Twice,” the girl replied, though she admitted she wasn’t sure if she would go to heaven. Hunter shared Revelation 3:5, where Jesus promises, “I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life.” Looking her in the eye, Hunter reminded her that she belongs to God and that means she will spend eternity with Him.
As the grill walk wound through the neighborhood, a close-knit group of pastors’ wives served together. Abi Morris from Buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort, Kentucky, recalled what happened next.
“We met a mom named Laura, who was just worn down by her children’s health challenges and her own exhaustion,” Morris said. “She admitted she had been feeling hopeless, weighed down by worry and sleepless nights.”
Laura told the women that at her daughter’s first ultrasound, doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy because they saw no chance of viability. She refused. Three years later, that child is now a preschooler, living with ongoing seizures that require Laura’s constant watch. “Sometimes it’s really hard,” Laura said through tears, describing nights spent awake listening for the next medical episode. “But my baby is proof that God is here.”
The women prayed with her in her carport while her daughter looked on from the backseat of the family vehicle. Laura told the women that the timing of their visit “felt like God’s provision.”
These moments, fleeting as they might seem, pointed to something larger: small acts of compassion planting seeds of hope in ordinary neighborhoods.
Building What Lasts
Serve Tour Fort Collins mobilized 405 volunteers from 44 churches and 18 states to complete 30 projects in two days. By the end of the weekend, local leaders reported 816 gospel conversations and 94 people professing faith in Christ. But the numbers, leaders insisted, are only part of the story.
Sammy Simmons, National Project Director for the North American Mission Board, reminded volunteers that “no act of love is insignificant with King Jesus involved.” Whether it was painting, installing a fence, or planting a garden, he said, “God used it in a great way.”
Zach Thurman, church planter and pastor of Overland Church, put it in eternal perspective. “Listen, the labor that you did this weekend will matter in a million years, because it will matter in eternity,” he told the crowd at the closing rally. “What you did this weekend brought hope. Years from now, someone will remember that your church served at their school or in their neighborhood, and in a moment of crisis, they’ll know where to turn.”
That vision echoes the Serve Tour theme: building what lasts. At Colorado State, it meant a deck and patio where students will gather for years. At Harvest Farm, it meant fresh walls that restored dignity to daily life. At Derby Hill, it meant a garden where neighbors will grow food together and a sanctuary renewed for worship. In schools, parks, and mobile home communities, it meant creating spaces where people felt seen, loved, and invited into something bigger than themselves: the story of God’s redeeming work.
And those were only a fraction of the 30 projects spread across the weekend. Teams built fences for families in need, landscaped for a senior woman, cleaned homes, restored trails, upgraded school playgrounds, launched a youth ministry, painted a bivocational pastor’s home, and even fenced in a dog park. Each project required long hours and hard labor, but together they showed the breadth of what can happen when churches work side by side to serve a city.
Cantrell’s words about “breaking up hard ground” lingered long after the tools were packed away. Fences weather, gardens need to be replanted, and paint chips. But the hope of Christ, spoken on porches, shared over burgers, and planted in schoolyards, remains.
And that is what Serve Tour left behind in Fort Collins: not just a weekend of projects, but a witness to a gospel that builds what lasts.
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Send Relief, a collaborative ministry between the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board, is Southern Baptists’ global compassion ministry. For more information on opportunities to serve alongside us, visit servetour.org/trips.
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