TORKELSON: Displaying their faith with heart and hands

By Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 15, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated September 15, 2008 at 2:33 a.m.

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Jean Torkelson / The Rocky

Kristin Kleinman, 14, helps spruce up a west Denver home as part of a new metro-area program called Extreme Community Makeover.

She looked to be in her late 80s, with a delicate, luminous complexion and carefully coiffed snow-white hair. She opened the door of her west Denver home carefully, as if to steel herself against a raw and violent world.

It was the first Saturday in September, and strangers were pounding on her porch and swarming all over her yard.

But wait - these were the good guys, helping this frail and gentle homeowner by replacing broken windows, painting and pulling weeds at her home of 32 years.

"Since my husband passed away, I can't afford to do it." she said with dignity, but on the edge of tears. Oh, did she have to give her name? Not if she didn't want to, I said. What relief in her worried eyes.

Her help came from a new metrowide program called Extreme Community Makeover. To me, the word "community" has been worn to a cliche, a sugary abstraction, especially in this political season.

But this program aims for specific results. This year, 30 metro-area churches and organizations, operating as Confluence Ministries, have deployed 1,000 volunteers over 25 blocks of west Colfax Avenue. (For more details, log on to extremecommunity makeover.org.)

That weekend, Greenwood Community Church in Greenwood Village was in charge. Laura Kindregan, a church member and public relations specialist, was explaining the program's details. But the elderly lady's fragility, her vulnerability, left both of us speechless for a moment.

"It's people like her," Kindregan finally said, "who make this so neat."

The makeover program highlights some truths: It's fashionable to rail against tax exemptions, but actually, government could never accomplish what churches and nonprofits can with volunteers on a Saturday morning. It also signals how the younger generation sees their faith.

"Young people innately get it," said Peter Menconi, 64, a retired dentist and Greenwood's outreach pastor, wearing a baseball cap and his Saturday raking clothes. He's written a book, The Intergenerational Church, which explores the differences among the World War II generation, which worships in pews, the "me-directed" baby boomers, and today's youth. "They have to be hands-on in the community," Menconi said of the latter. "Absolutely."

Today's millennial generation has grown up with divorce and instability, "so they understand injustice. They understand the underdog," he said. "They're looking for personal healing. They find it by showing love to other people."

And love isn't a sugary abstraction.

"We want our hands dirty," Kindregan said. She used the example of her husband, Danny, 33, a talented arborist, who was pruning a tree nearby.

When it comes to helping the needy, some people (and rightly so) envision mission fields in Africa, she said. "He sees the need next door."

torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055

• September 15, 2008

  6:26 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  HopiMedicineMan writes:

  "...the word 'community' has been worn to a cliche, a sugary abstraction, especially in this political season."

  "And love isn't a sugary abstraction."

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