Seventy-five years on Leyden Street
Park Hill Congregational Church, UCC grew out of the post-World War II housing boom, organized in 1949 and moving into its first building on Leyden Street in 1950. The current sanctuary was dedicated in 1956, along with a second-floor suite of classrooms and music offices. Under the leadership of its first permanent minister, the Rev. David Colwell, the young congregation grew to nearly 700 members within its first decade.
In 1961 the congregation voted to join the United Church of Christ, a denomination that had been formed four years earlier from the union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. About 100 members left a few years later to start a new church in Aurora, taking the name Parkview UCC. Membership eventually stabilized around 200 in later decades, even as the surrounding neighborhood shifted dramatically.
A church that walked toward integration
The story of Park Hill Congregational is bound up with the integration of the neighborhood that surrounds it. Because of racist redlining, African Americans had been prevented from moving east of Colorado Boulevard out of the Five Points neighborhood into Park Hill. In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights Movement progressed, Black families began moving in, and the church joined with other local congregations to welcome the change - an effort members describe in later years as putting down a marker that racial integration works.
The 1980s brought a painful loss. The Rocky Mountain Conference of the UCC helped form a majority African American congregation from the Black members of area UCC churches, drawing heavily on Park Hill's roster. That congregation lasted fifteen years; some of those members eventually returned. The church's recent history has been shaped by an explicit racial justice ministry, including a 2016 small-group study on white privilege, the opening of its meeting space to Black Lives Matter 5280, and the policy that any group whose mission is racial justice may meet in the building free of charge.
Two covenants: Open and Affirming since 1991, Just Peace since 2004
Park Hill declared itself an Open and Affirming congregation of the UCC in January 1991. The covenant, drawn from Galatians 3:28, reads in part: "Convinced that 'in Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one...,' Park Hill Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, declares itself to be Open and Affirming of women and men of all ages, races, abilities, and sexual orientations who desire to share in its services and activities." A study on the ONA page works through the passages most often used against LGBTQ+ people and grounds the congregation's welcome in the standard of loving, just, non-exploitative, tender, respectful, mutual, and compassionate relationships.
Thirteen years later, on August 22, 2004, the same congregation formally adopted a Just Peace resolution, a denomination-wide UCC designation that articulates commitments to advocacy, service, and education in pursuit of peace and justice. The covenant names militarism, racism, greed, consumerism, sexism, homophobia, and nationalism as belief systems that impede peace, and pledges the congregation to "life-nurturing, planet-protecting, nonviolent direct actions." Members of the church have been part of the marches at Pride, MLK, the Women's March, and March for Our Lives, and the church belongs to Faith Communities United Against Gun Violence. Park Hill also counts itself as a Just Peace Church in the UCC's roster, joining together its progressive stances on inclusion and its peace commitments under one vocation.
The pews are gone
By 2009 the building needed major repair. Members weighed selling it and sharing space with another congregation, or staying and pouring money back into the existing structure. In 2012 the vote - 47 to 53 - came down in favor of staying and investing.
The renovation that followed replaced the seven-step pulpit with a moveable lectern and swapped fixed pews for movable chairs, an architectural adjustment that brought an immediate 20 percent rise in attendance. Members came in larger numbers for worship, and many brought children. The fellowship hall got a full kitchen. A worship space, the narthex, and classrooms were reworked for hospitality. Roughly a million dollars in pledges and gifts funded the work.
Accessibility was part of the build. The sanctuary, restrooms, and most of the building are wheelchair accessible, and chair lifts connect the main floor to both the second-floor choir loft and the downstairs Fellowship Hall. A hearing loop is built into the floor and connects directly to the T-coil in hearing aids; headsets are also available from the ushers.
Sunday morning at 10:00
Worship begins at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time every Sunday, with children's choir, instrumental ensembles, and the Gospel Band rehearsing beforehand. Communion is typically celebrated once a month, and the table is open to everyone - including children and visitors - with grape juice and gluten-free wafers.
Each service draws on a wide range of music. Some Sundays lean traditional mainline, with the organ leading hymns and anthems. Others center piano accompaniment and contemporary songs drawn from a variety of UCC songbooks and beyond. The third Sunday of every month is Gospel Sunday, when the choir and the six-to-ten-piece Park Hill Gospel Band take over. Worshipers are invited to bring their own instruments and sing as they feel comfortable.
Those who cannot come in person can join by Zoom, Facebook Live, or YouTube; recordings are posted for on-demand viewing. A nursery is staffed during the service for children five and younger. Children six and older go to Sunday School during the service after Children's Time; both groups return to take communion together when it is offered. Worship Buddy Bags near the entrance hold quiet activities for younger children. Service is also available on demand through the church's YouTube channel.
The 1955 Reuter organ and the music program
Billie Busby Smith, Director of Music Ministries and organist, leads an unusually layered musical life. She sits down at a 22-rank Reuter organ built in 1955 by the Reuter Organ Company of Lawrence, Kansas, originally designed as a prototype for the firm's flagship instrument at the former Colorado Women's College. The Great division was added in 1964, the Swell in 1969, and the 16-foot pedal reed in 1985. Organists from across the region have used the instrument for recitals of the American Guild of Organists and the Colorado Symphony Guild.
The Sanctuary/Gospel Choir sings all year, accompanied by the Park Hill Gospel Band, a six-to-ten-player ensemble of acoustic and electronic instruments that rehearses at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays and takes the service music for many worship services. The PHCC Wind Ensemble, handbells under coordinator Pam Hennessey, and a range of soloists round out the program. Both the Sanctuary and Gospel Choirs are open to teens and adults of all musical abilities; new singers may join throughout the year. Music Ministry partnerships extend outside the building, with longstanding relationships at Denver Inner City Parish and Morningstar Dayton Place, and a team each spring for Denver's Walk MS.
Children and youth
Pre-worship childcare is open to all ages between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., and a staffed nursery cares for infants and toddlers through age five during the service. Children six through ten attend Sunday School after Children's Time in worship; special bulletins, written for readers and pre-readers, sit on a table near the Worship Buddy Bags.
Youth Group gathers middle and high schoolers on the first and third Sundays of the month, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., and the church works with the UCC's La Foret conference center near Colorado Springs for retreats and summer programming. Children and youth members also travel on the annual service trips to Pine Ridge. The Multigenerational Minister, Theo Isoz, joined the staff as a part-time role guiding a new Faith and Friendship Groups program - small groups organized around affinity and life stage - intended to deepen community connections across the congregation.
Beyond the city: Pine Ridge, refugee resettlement, the unhoused
For more than a decade, an annual week-long service trip to the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Reservation in South Dakota has drawn a dozen or more adults and youth members each summer. The trips, organized through the nonprofit Re-Member, involve rebuilding and weatherproofing homes on the reservation and learning about Lakota culture. Members have logged more than 60 such trips since 2009.
The same kind of attention has been given to people experiencing homelessness. For six years Park Hill UCC was an overnight shelter site through the Women's Homelessness Initiative, hosting 20 women every Tuesday night for 26 weeks each year, with nearly 100 volunteers across the season. The program was suspended during the pandemic; the church has since shifted its homelessness ministry toward supplying meals and personal items through Saint Francis Center and The Gathering Place. On the third Thursday of each month, volunteers also serve a meal at the Senior Support Center, a day center for hungry and homeless seniors in Denver.
The congregation has helped resettle refugee families from countries including Nepal and Afghanistan. Members accompany newcomers to appointments, help furnish apartments, and built a backyard vegetable garden for one family. In 2019 the church also hosted a group of young Nicaraguan asylum seekers for a season.
Knitting4Peace
The church building is home to Knitting4Peace, an interfaith nonprofit founded in 2006 by the Rev. Susan McKee that has since distributed more than 185,000 hand-knit items - blankets, hats, mittens, scarves, and "Peace Pals" - to people in more than 82 countries. Park Hill's own Peace Pod, an interfaith knitting circle, meets twice a month on site. The group has partnered with Denver Health's Newborns in Need program, The Gathering Place, the Women's Homelessness Initiative, and many local schools and medical facilities.
A reading list of social justice
The Book Group meets on the second Thursday of every month at 7:00 p.m. Mountain Time on Zoom and reads widely on race, gender, immigration, indigenous experience, and LGBTQ+ lives. Past selections include Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An AntiRacist, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, Valarie Kaur's See No Stranger, Jemar Tisby's The Color of Compromise, Ilhan Omar's This Is What America Looks Like, and Isabel Wilkerson's Caste. The reading list runs to over a hundred titles going back more than seven years, and the group is open to anyone who would like to join, whether or not they have read the book.
A writers' group called Park Hill Pens meets every other Saturday at 10:00 a.m. on Zoom. The Men's Group meets on the first Thursday of each month for honest conversation about life, and on the third Thursday for current events; both gatherings are held in person and online.
Toward environmental stewardship
The 2012 capital campaign left the congregation thinking about energy. A $100,000 grant from Energy Outreach Colorado funded solar panels on the building, LED light fixtures throughout, replacement of boilers, furnaces, and air-conditioning units with high-efficiency models, low-flow toilets, and a switch to more xeric landscaping that waters less grass and feeds a pollinator garden instead. Investments are routed through a "Beyond Fossil Fuels" fund that screens out gas and oil. Coffee hour switched to reusable mugs. The church also added roof insulation to the chapel, motion sensors on light switches, and an outdoor labyrinth for members to walk.
Twenty mission partners and counting
Every month a different community organization is highlighted in worship and given a portion of the loose cash in the offering plate. On the fifth Sundays of months that have them, loose offerings go to the Pastor's Discretionary Fund. The list of partners has included the Denver Inner City Parish, St. Francis Center, the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, the Florence Project, Senior Support Services, Archway Communities, Karis Community, Re-Member, Family Promise Eviction Prevention, Greater Park Hill Community Food Pantry, Colorado Ceasefire, Colfax Community Network, and El Centro Humanitario, among others. Park Hill is also a "5 for 5 Congregation" supporting each of the UCC's annual special offerings: One Great Hour of Sharing, Strengthen the Church, Neighbors in Need, the Christmas Fund, and Our Churches Wider Mission. Giving to the church can be done online through the church's giving page, by check, or through stock gifts channeled via United Church Funds.
Belonging beyond the immediate neighborhood
The pandemic shifted how the church understood its own reach. With services, book groups, and small classes on Zoom, members who had moved away - some to Pittsburgh, some farther - stayed engaged. A member of the Pastor Parish Relations Committee now lives in Pittsburgh and serves the church from there. People can become members even if they never set foot in Denver, as long as they intend to live out the calling to "bold acts of compassion and justice" wherever they are. The Membership Covenant, drawn from the 1629 Salem Covenant and the work of theologian Walter Brueggemann, lists the promises members make to one another: regular worship, financial support, active ministry, care for the church and one another, and ongoing spiritual growth. Baptism, confirmation, weddings, and funerals are offered to members and, in many cases, to anyone who asks.
Who serves the church today
The Rev. Larissa Romero was installed as senior pastor in September 2023. Her theological curiosity, in her own words, centers on the intersections of liberation mestizaje and Brujeria, painted prayer, and gardening. She was previously interim pastor at Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville and solo pastor at Pascack Reformed Church in Park Ridge, New Jersey. Billie Busby Smith directs the music program. Anja Oss teaches the Faith and Justice Sunday School. Pearl Vercruysse coordinates the youth program. Theo Isoz, a Master of Divinity student at Duke Divinity School, joined as Multigenerational Minister. The current building on Leyden Street is also home to several community groups and longtime partners, with the sanctuary's flexibility making it a frequent venue for neighborhood arts organizations such as Bennie Williams Spiritual Voices, the Spirituals Project, the Rocky Mountain Children's Chorale, and the Park Hill Brass.