Welcome to Denver
Denver, the Mile High City, sits at an average elevation of 5,280 feet above sea level. Situated just at the base of the Rocky Mountains, the Denver Metro area spans an area of 4,503 square miles and is home to over 2.8 million people in over 40 different communities.
With more than 300 days of sunshine per year, Denver residents are free to enjoy the wide variety of recreation, sporting, and outdoor events that the city has to offer. Denver has over 200 parks as well as many rivers and lakes within city limits and is within driving distance to the countless outdoor activities available in the Rocky Mountains such as skiing, fishing, hunting, four-wheel driving, hiking, back-packing and camping. Denver is a nature-lovers paradise.
Denver also boasts most educated city in the United States, having more High School and College graduates per capita than any other metropolitan area in the country. The Denver Performing Arts Complex, covering four square blocks, is the world’s largest performing arts center. Denver is also home to the Museum of Nature and Science, the Colorado History Museum, the Denver Zoo, the Ocean Journey Aquarium, and the Denver Art Museum.
Although there are many positive things happening in Denver, it is by no means a perfect city. As in many other major metropolitan centers, Denver grew poorer in the 1980s. Since then, poverty has increased in three out of every four neighborhoods, creating not only neighborhood boundaries, but very strong economic and ethnic boundaries as well. Inequality of income is a continuing problem in Denver. The poorest fifth of Denver’s population is growing poorer while the wealthiest fifth is growing much wealthier. The combination of these two social injustices has created poorer people as well as a vast over-representation of persons of color within the city’s poor. As a result of these social problems, many of the neighborhoods in Denver deal with high crime rates, high dropout rates, high teen-pregnancy rates, and high levels of drug-use.
DOOR-Denver works with approximately 40 different assistance agencies in the Denver Metro Area. Through volunteering and working alongside these agencies and interacting with the poor of the city, it is our goal to help our youth to begin to humanize the people that they come in contact with. In doing so, the urban poor can become more than just another statistic; they can become real people in the eyes of our youth. We can begin to expose youth to different cultures and traditions of the city to help them further humanize and appreciate those of different backgrounds than.
The purpose of DOOR is to challenge individuals to consider ministry and service an essential, daily part of living out their authentic Christian faith. By meeting, learning from, and working with diverse urban people, participants give and receive the love God has for each person. Through these relationships they will explore together how to be faithful to Christ’s call to be salt and light in today’s turbulent world. DOOR seeks to provide ministry opportunities that will be both helpful to local people and lead to a deepened understanding of faith and ministry. Participants will explore the strengths as well as the needs of urban people and communities and will participate in various approaches to ministry in the city.
While in Denver, it is our hope that participants will gain a new awareness of the city and its people, a new sense of God’s presence in the city and a new desire to be actively involved in ministry and service. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their experiences and explore new ways in which new insights gained can be applied to their situation at home and in future ministry. In this way, DOOR seeks to motivate the church to be actively involved in bringing to reality the Kingdom to the world.