If you've been around Gateway for a while, you have probably heard of a ministry referred to simply as "the Capitol Heights Middle School Ministry."  This ministry will now be known as HOPES, which stands for Helping Our Public Education System. 

This ministry, led by Seth and Megan Rhodebeck, started very organically with Seth and Megan wanting to encourage the people of Capitol Heights Middle School (CHMS) with the gospel.  To the surprise of Seth and Megan, the work of this ministry has really grown over the years and now people from several churches have joined with Gateway in ministering.  As we’ve prayed, our desire is to see this ministry grow beyond CHMS alone and begin to minister to the Montgomery Public School system (MPS) as a whole.

In choosing the name HOPES for this ministry, we wanted to cast a vision beyond CHMS and call others into the mission of serving MPS.  We’ve noticed that there is a lot of despair in Montgomery concerning MPS.  However, in Christ, there is hope!  We want a name that describes what we’re trying to accomplish and also brings encouragement each time it is spoken.  The opposite of despair is hope.  It was natural to build a name for this ministry around the beauty of hope.  HOPES seemed to perfectly capture those things.

In short, nothing is changing about this ministry except the name.  It is still a Gateway ministry, it is still focusing exclusively on Capitol Heights Middle School for the time being; we just believe the Lord is calling his church to minister to even more.  We hope this will be a step in that direction.

Learn more at hopesmgm.com