Paul & Glenda Lehman

Paul and Glenda Lehman serve in Glade Park, a rural community in western Colorado. The area is situated on a plateau above the Colorado National Monument, with spectacular views of red sandstone canyons and sheer rock faces. The community is just forty minutes from Grand Junction, a larger community of 150,000 in the Western Slope Valley along the Colorado River. Both Glade Park and Grand Junction are major mountain biking destinations, and the area houses the world’s largest flat-top mountain, Grand Mesa.

Mesa County, which includes Glade Park, has always struggled with a high unemployment rate and low wages. This has led to a large homeless population and high levels of drug and alcohol addiction. Grand Junction is known as the divorce capital of Colorado, with the tenth highest rate in the country. But a true indicator of a country in distress is the suicide rate. In 2015, Mesa County’s suicide rate soared over the state average of 19.7 to a startling 32.3 for every 100,000 people.

One of the biggest needs in Glade Park and the surround communities is to see a spiritual revival. Roughly sixty-five percent of residents in this area reported no religious affiliation. Bringing people into a relationship with Jesus is the true way to battle the problems of addiction and depression in the community. The area also needs better drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, reentry programs to integrate prisoners back into the community, and better care for the homeless and others struggling financially.

After seeing the need in their community, the Lehman’s began several ministries to reach local families and men. They serve as a pastoral team to Glade Park Bible Church and the community, which strives to be a place of refuge for people who are hurting and a light to introduce people to Jesus. The church offers services every Sunday morning, as well as Vacation Bible School and community outreach events during the summer. Glade Park Bible Church also aims to make a difference in the surrounding community by praying, helping with road cleanup, funding the fire department and community center, and helping people by providing food and other basic needs.

Paul also has a heart for people struggling from the hopelessness of addictions, failed marriages, family crises, legal trouble, anger issues, and suicide. Through one on one mentoring, Bible study and the involvement of the Glade Park Church Paul strives to care for people and bring them to the transforming power of a love relationship with Jesus. In Paul’s own words, “My own experience with the freedom, peace, and love received through a relationship with God through Jesus, compels me to the hurting and down trodden of Mesa County and specifically Glade Park” .

Paul grew up in central Pennsylvania and always wanted to be a preacher. He held “pretend revivals” with his siblings. He studied at Hesston College in Hesston, KS where he received a degree in religious studies. Paul served with Youth with a Mission and other short term mission assignments, has done fill-in preaching in Utah, Colorado and Pennsylvania, jail ministry, and church planting. He continues to do men’s ministry, Bible teaching and Bible studies. Paul is married to Glenda a Colorado Native. In 2011 Paul felt a calling to minister full-time with Glade Park Church, this required a leap of faith, he quit his job, became an InFaith missionary for support and they have been at Glade Park Church since. Glenda handles all the machinery that makes the church and their mission run. In his spare time, he loves to sing, fish, work on his yard and around the house, do one on one mentoring, and travel.