The 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center A Ministry of Love & Compassion

BY THE REV. JAN PEARSON, DEACON

Twenty-one years ago, a new curate arrived at St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church in unincorporated Jefferson County. He and I shared an office before he moved on to become vicar at Our Merciful Savior, on 32nd Avenue, then a struggling neighborhood beset with low-income housing, unemployment, food insecurity, and little or no access to health care. It has changed now—more of this later.

But 21 years ago, the vicar and I were soon envisioning a Jubilee Ministry. Jubilee Ministry is a nationwide network of more than 600 social outreach organizations and ministries all affiliated in some way with The Episcopal Church. In Colorado, we have 30 Jubilee Ministry centers, including food banks, day shelters, feeding programs, prison ministries, health care ministries, ministries serving immigrants, Native Americans, children and other vulnerable populations.

A board of directors was formed to help coordinate ministry outreach to the neighborhood. We drew up articles of incorporation, established bylaws, and called on school leaders and colleagues. The work of the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center was underway. The vision remained steadfast: to serve our neighbors with love, justice, and mercy out of the abundance provided by through grants, benefactors, the generosity of Episcopal churches, other faith communities, and others who support our mission and the work of the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center staff and volunteers.

The Jubilee Center has provided food, health care, transportation vouchers, and educational assistance for all who come through its doors. We offered respite for the unhoused by offering a place to rest for a spell, refreshed by glass of cold water, and nourished by a hot meal. The Jubilee Center was the incubator of St. Benedict’s Health and Healing Ministry, which now is a ministry for the underserved in Boulder County.

The 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center also became a pilot site, funded by the Episcopal Church, to develop a model for Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). For many years we hosted the Bienvenidos Food Bank.

Our afterschool tutoring and our summer educational enrichment camps became a mainstay

for at-risk students, many of them lagging their peers by one or two grade levels. The center established lasting relationships with parents and students. Jubilee Center staff members were invited to college and high-school graduations, fifth- and eighth-grade continuation ceremonies, even kindergarten “graduations.”

We helped with DACA applications and renewals, forging relationships with the students and the young adults. High school and college students found internships at the Jubilee Center, and modest scholarships were extended to low-income families so their children could attend college.

I cannot tell you how many students, individuals, and families became a part of my life, allowing me to take part in both their pains and to celebrate the joys and milestones of their lives—birthday parties, weddings, baptisms, first communions, quinceañeras, and even funerals. I’ve gone to court with individuals, vouching for their integrity as they set on the path to citizenship, and visiting those incarcerated at detention facilities to pray with them and offer encouragement to those being deported. We arranged first-time mammograms for 40-year-old women who had never been screened for breast cancer; eye exams and glasses to those applying for driver’s licenses and employment. These were the blessings, the fringe benefits, from the relationships formed through the Jubilee ministry headquartered at Our Merciful Savior Episcopal Church on 32nd Avenue; some brief and others lasting for years.

A changed neighborhood, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center to rethink its ministry. For months children were unable to come for in-person tutoring. With technology, however, our tutoring support continued. I met with students via Zoom, phone calls, email, and even text. We could continue to provide children and their families with 600–700 pounds of food each week owing to our long relationship with the Food Bank of the Rockies.

We are now facing another reality. Scripture tells us “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (Eccl. 3:1) long supported our ministry, both through the school year and during the summer-camp season. Regis facilitated a gathering of nonprofit leaders to have dialogue and share the work that was being done in Denver and surrounding communities to serve the least, the lost, and those most in need.

One professor has asked me over the past three years about our location in a historic northwest Denver neighborhood, with its abundant, affordable housing stock. His questions prompted me to begin reading about gentrification. After some research and other preparation, I made presentations to his classes, discussing the evident gentrification around the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center and how it was affecting the people we serve.

Gentrification occurs when newcomers—generally younger and white high-income homeowners— begin to move into ethnically diverse working-class neighborhoods with underdeveloped housing stock. 32nd Avenue was ripe for redevelopment, it became clear. Due to gentrification, our longtime neighborhood had become less diverse, to the detriment of current residents. In these areas where gentrification is occuring in Denver, economically disadvantaged residents are unable to pay increasingly higher rents and are then forced to move away, usually to the far reaches of Metro Denver, in order to find affordable housing. In Northwest Denver, where the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center is, those who have still managed to arrive at our doors seeking overnight shelter or food, face the suspicion of our new neighbors. Our neighborhood, for the most part, is no longer welcoming to those in need.

The 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center board of directors has therefore with sadness and grief voted to close its doors, ending our programs at the end of 2021. Yet the memory of sweet relationships, people served, and the lives changed will undoubtedly inspire new ministries in new places, where we shall work alongside those most in need. And we will revel in the remembered joy of our service over these past 21 years of God’s work in northwest Denver.

THE REV. JAN PEARSON, DEACON, is the general manager and founding board member of the 32nd Avenue Jubilee Center.

Above & Top Right: Canon Alex Dyer and Bishop Kym Lucas, along with archeologist Dr. Cynthia Smith Bradley, explore the 12th century home of the Ancestral Puebloan people at the Wallace site, an active archaeological excavation near Cortez, Colorado, while visiting St. Barnabas of the Valley in May.

Photo courtesy Victoria Atkins

Below & Bottom Right: Brandon and Joshua Garcia baptize their child at Grace & St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church,

Colorado Springs. Photo courtesy Br. Steve Starr

Right & Below: Bishop Kym ordains Alexandra Bilow and Amy Newell Large to the Sacred Order of Deacons and Laura Osborne to the Sacred Order of Priests at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs.

Photos courtesy David Futey

Below: Bishop Kym prays for the ordinands before they are vested at the 2021 Ordination at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Colorado Springs.

Photo courtesy Fred Mast

Below: The Rev. Kimberlee Law and Lay Pastoral Leader Tamaira Terry baptize new members of the Lundin family at St. John’s Episcopal Church, New Castle.

Photo courtesy Jaci Spuhler

OF

1300 Washington Street Denver, Colorado 80203