Our Vision & Mission
Our vision is a city where families are transcending poverty, in part because churches and faith communities are helping in ways that are genuinely helpful and empowering. It is a city where communities are being led by those who were once labeled as least, last, and lost. This vision draws its inspiration from scripture, which provides the breath-taking image of a city where those who were once poor now prosper, where children are no longer doomed to misfortune, and where unlikely partners live and work together in peace (Isaiah 65:17-25).
We engage our communities and equip leaders for God's transformational work among the poor.
Engage Our Communities
Provide spiritual formation experiences and resources to help faith communities connect with the poor and practice the most helpful and enduring responses to poverty.
Equip Leaders
Develop leaders from and for lower-income, higher-risk urban communities.
Empower the Poor
Address tangible needs of the poor in ways that strengthen their own capacities.
Our Values
Following Jesus
We are followers of Jesus from different streams of the Christian tradition.
Holistic Transformation
We seek the spiritual, social, and economic transformation of both people and places.
The City
Our place is the city: we value the city, both our own great city (Denver), and the larger reality of an urbanizing, globally-connected world.
Abundance
We choose an asset-based vision of life that begins with God’s yes, rooted in the assumption that there is enough – enough of all the ingredients for human flourishing in every context. Our task is to pay attention to how the Spirit is already at work in our city and joyfully participate in unleashing forces for good.
Empowerment
Every person, created in the image of God, has something to contribute to God’s redemptive work. Helping others gain the capacity to shape their lives and communities is a higher form of service (though often a more difficult one) than simply doing for others; we delight in blurring the lines between those who give and those who receive.
Peacemaking
Our vision of civil society is rooted in the biblical vision of shalom. We practice unplugging from the violence of rivalry and exclusion, modeling ways of being in which enemies are embraced as friends and all parties are mutually transformed. We value relationships, especially those that cross barriers of culture, ethnicity, economics and religious tradition. We value collaboration, including with those whose worldviews may differ from ours, for the shared joy of building healthy communities.
The Perspective from Below
We are especially attentive to the lived experiences and unique perspectives of those on the margins of society. We are continually astonished by the depth of wisdom, goodness and grace discovered at the bottom and edges of society, and in places of great pain.
Servant Leadership
We value leadership expressed through generosity, integrity, peace, and self-emptying love.
Our Story
Mile High Ministries was formed in 1988 as a collaborative effort between a group of churches working across denominational and cultural lines.
We began our journey as a small group of mostly suburban folks with a heart for the poor. Over the years we’ve become urban people and an urban movement, deeply connected to our neighborhoods in the heart of the city. While our focus is Denver, we’re helping communities across the metro area see and connect with the growing numbers of poor and marginalized people within their own neighborhoods, while building connections between leaders throughout our urbanizing world.
From its earliest days, Mile High Ministries functioned as a kind of “incubator” for a variety of social ventures, which in many cases have spun-off to operate independently. Examples of past-projects include: The Marion Street Project, which transformed five 100-year-old “boarding homes” and an office building into a center of holistic community service; Belay Enterprises, which launched a successful home-improvement thrift store (Bud's Warehouse) to provide career development for individuals rebuilding lives from poverty, addiction, or prison, as well as creating a loan pool to provide small-business loans to lower-income entrepreneurs; and Prodigal Gatherings, which provides a safe place for homeless and runaway teenagers to build positive relationships while connecting youth and children to area organizations for their holistic needs. Over the years, Mile High Ministries has hosted many hundreds of people for seminars, workshops, conferences, and personal journeys into communities unlike their own.
After 14 years of focusing our work in Capitol Hill, we expanded to work in neighborhoods across the city of Denver, in partnership with churches, faith-based organizations, and other community organizations. In 1999, we established a leadership development center in our apartment building on the east side of Denver. And in 2001, we purchased the old “Motel 7” on Denver’s west side, which was renovated into transitional housing for homeless families, a legal aid clinic, and home base for a variety of innovative responses to urban poverty.
Mile High Ministries is an inter-denominational community. The people of Mile High Ministries – staff, board, volunteers and supporters – represent different streams of the Christian tradition: Social Justice, Evangelical, Charismatic, Sacramental, and others. Most of us share a common commitment to the historic Christian faith and to God’s active concern for the poor and marginalized.