Rehoboth Christian School Launches Capital Campaign

A Navajo weaving demonstration and Navajo songs and music took place recently as part of a $13.7 million capital campaign event to raise funds to construct a new high school building for Rehoboth Christian School.

Over $550,000 was raised at the event, bringing the total raised in the “Preparing the Way” campaign to over $4.6 million. There is still $5 million available in a double-match challenge grant. Held at Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Mich., the event was geared to be the opening of the public portion of the campaign.

Other events will take place in various regions of the U.S. over the next year.

“We want to design a building that is conducive to 21st century learning – to reflect the new ways teachers teach and students learn,” said Carol Bremer-Bennett, superintendent of Rehoboth Christian School.

They hope to build a school with flexible spaces that can accommodate larger groups as well as smaller spaces for independent learning, she said.

“We hope to have a large open area where worship happens and also create new spaces for counseling students and families in crisis.”

Located in Gallup, New Mexico and founded some 110 years ago by Christian Reformed Church missionaries, Rehoboth Christian School has an elementary and middle school, as well the aging high school, on its 160-acre campus.

The current high school was built in the 1950’s and, says a brochure, “has become ill-equipped for preparing our young leaders to be salt and light in their communities and the world.”

The structure is plagued by severe water damage, uneven floors, heating and cooling problems, and windows that won’t shut or open as needed, says the brochure.

“It is in bad shape,” says Bremer-Bennett.

Bremer-Bennett says they had hoped to raise the money for a new high school several years ago, after they had a successful campaign to raise money to build a new fitness center.

But soon after the fitness center opened in 2008, the recession hit. Nearby Zuni Christian Mission School was also by then in the midst of a capital campaign.

So, says Bremer-Bennett, they decided to wait for Zuni to successfully finish its campaign and for the recession to end before they could move ahead with the effort to build a high school.

“We didn’t want to put 100 years of God’s work at risk” by trying to raise money at an inopportune time, she said. In addition, they have the goal of being able to pay for the new school and avoiding debt before starting construction.

The new school will be built of stucco and face the east, according to a Navajo tradition of constructing structures in the direction where the sun rises.

“We want to honor the Southwest. The building will have a pueblo feel to it,” said Bremer-Bennett.

A gathering circle will be built in front of the entrance and, wherever possible, there will be windows allowing in the rich sunlight that often fills the rocky landscape of this part of New Mexico.

Although it will be a new building, it will also be more than that.

“In our current setting, where over 40 percent of Navajo families live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers around 45 percent, Rehoboth is a beacon of light and opportunity,” says the capital campaign brochure.

“In order to meet the needs of our diverse community and break the cycle of poverty, Rehoboth must continue to offer the hope of an exemplary Christian education.”

Rehoboth Christian High School, with its 511 students, was recently named one of the “50 Best Christian High Schools in America” by the BestSchools.org website.

If the current capital campaign meets its goal, they hope to break ground and be open for school by 2017. Hopes are to build enough room to accommodate students who are currently on a waiting list for the school.