Early Sunday, about 300 orange- T-shirt-wearing, bucket-toting church folk poured out of the Praise Center and swarmed neighborhoods along South Federal Boulevard.
“Church is canceled,” Praise Center’s marquee spelled out in little lights. “Don’t go to church. Be the church.”
The nondenominational Christian church had a to-do list, 22 daunting service projects slated mostly for a string of low-income Latino and Asian neighborhoods in southwestern Denver.
The list represented the largest effort ever by the 27-year-old congregation, and the first nonblizzard event to cancel a church service.
“This is not Bronco Sunday,” Pastor William Rodriguez shouted at his blaze-orange throng after the fade-out of chords struck by jazz musicians. “This is Faith in Action Sunday. This is Jesus’ Day.
“The church has left the building!”
Drivers and pedestrians were surprised, if not alarmed, by brightly dressed people dodging cars at the busy intersection of Federal and West Alameda Avenue to shove free bottles of icy water and church fliers through their open windows, into their hands. Only a few threatened to call the police.
People at the Super Saver gas station were a little confused, if not wary, that church members were pumping their gas, washing their windows and giving them 10-cents-a-gallon rebates on their purchases.
Some recipients of the free yard work were stunned. Some were tearful.
A few businesses along Federal at first tried to shoo congregants away before realizing they were just going to wash their windows. They washed cars also, for free, at South Sheridan Boulevard and West Florida Avenue.
“We’ll be contagious Christians,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll contaminate others with the love of God.”
A common response to the volunteer acts was: “Why?”
“We just want to serve you,” Rodriguez said.
Donations were not accepted.
At one housing project, some residents were afraid to come out, at first, because they thought the orange-clad workers raking their lawns and pruning their bushes were inmates from somewhere. But the T-shirts read: “Be the church.”
“I guess God is working Sundays,” said Charles Brown, who pulled up on his bicycle at one of the church’s watering stations.
Associate Pastor Dan Fitzsimmons, who devised the projects list, said he freely borrowed ideas from other urban ministries.
“I tease our members: ‘If you want to do mission work, walk outside the church doors. There’s Vietnam. There’s Mexico,”‘ Fitzsimmons said. “We want to be more than a full parking lot outside a church every Sunday.”
For Sunday’s do-good marathon, the church enlisted about 50 members of a Spanish-speaking church, Fuente de Visión, to act as translators.
The Praise Center congregation, which numbers about 400 to 600 most Sundays, had been preparing for this day for weeks.
The graffiti-cleanup squad had obtained all the required approvals from city authorities.
For weeks, Sunday-school kids had made cards and planted pots of flowers.
Late Sunday morning, about 20 children stormed the doors of Parkview Manor, a nursing home, where balloons soon were bobbing alongside every wheelchair.
“We sang to them,” said 9-year-old Arieanna Torrez. “We wanted to help them.”
They did help, said resident France Johnson, a stroke victim.
“The kids were so sweet,” she said.
After four hours of these labors, many in searing heat, church members returned, with red faces, glistening foreheads and hair stringy with sweat, to the Praise Center.
They shared stories. They broke bread.
“It was really exciting,” said 42-year- old Janet Perez, part of the church water brigade. “It’s just fast, short contact. At some point in your life, you’ll be all by yourself. And maybe somebody will pull out one of these cards we gave out and come to us.”
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com.
