St. Paul Catholic Community of Faith (ECC) located in Denver, Colorado, evolved from being a small, independent Catholic group in 2003 led by Fr. Don Sutton, to its now thriving community of faith co-housed with the Sixth Avenue United Church of Christ.

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Father Don was a Jesuit priest with rich experience, including teaching at Regis University, being the principal on-call sacramental minister to Denver’s hospitals, and serving seven years as Vicar at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Denver.  In 2003, his faculties in the Archdiocese had ended  when then Archbishop Caput decided against incardinating him into the archdiocese.  That decision led a group of parishioners to ask Fr. Don to  continue to preside at Eucharist and preach for them. 

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Fr. Don agreed that he would continue to serve this small group, which gathered initially in the home of Dr. Mike and Bonnie Kurtz.  Then, due to Fr. Don’s friendship with Pastor Kevin Maly (both having taught at Regis at the same time), the fledgling community was welcomed to St. Paul Lutheran Church just 2 blocks away from Denver’s Capitol Building. We subsequently gathered for our first Eucharist there on June 18, 2003. 

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This was a happy joining as both pastors were very interested in ecumenism. Even though the two groups maintained separate worship times, but decided for Holy Week and Easter of 2004 that it would provide for a better liturgy if they combined for preeminent celebrations.  The custom of joint worship expanded to include Christmas and Reformation Sunday. The two groups began doing common adult education studies and all social events were done jointly (Mardi Gras, Octoberfest, et al.).  Social outreach projects were also done in common, e.g., a soup kitchen and food bank, rummage sales, clothing drives, and collections of food and clothing at Christmas.  They jointly studied the great documents about Lutheran and Catholic relationship and theology, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999) and Declaration on the Way (2015).

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The study of these documents was a powerful force in solidifying the community’s sense of identity and purpose, expressing the hoped-for unity of the Christian community while maintaining and respecting differences.  In fact, the two pastors named the two communities the “St. Paul Community of Faith.”  This joint community grew  as the members of the separate traditions came to recognize what they shared in common and desired to express the commonalities as being more significant than the differences.  They desired to embody Ephesians 4:5, “…one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” 

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When Pastor Kevin resigned, the Bishop of the ELCA Rocky Mountain Synod, +Jim Gonia, appointed Rev. Penni Walsh as interim pastor to help the community’s transition. The Bishop also challenged the Catholic members of the community about their lack of affiliation with an episcopal jurisdiction. This led them to an examination of the theology and praxis of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC) and subsequently to the decision to request acceptance as an ECC community in 2018. No longer independent, St. Paul Denver ECC has grown in covenantal relationship with the other 4 ECC churches of the Rocky Mountain Region, with lay and clergy representatives of our community serving on its Regional Council.

St. Paul Lutheran and Catholic Community of Faith’s identity as a single community worshiping in two faith traditions was an inspiration to both Bishop Gonia and ECC Presiding Bishop Francis Krebs, who both saw us as a model of ecumenical unity “from the ground up.” Their dialogues, with input from the ELCA’s Chief Ecumenical Officer, led to the historic 2019 “Considerations for Collaboration in Mission and Sharing in Worship between Congregations of the Rocky Mountain Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Congregations of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion in this Territory.”

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Later in 2019, the Lutheran members called the Rev. Barbara Berry Bailey as their pastor, who was welcomed and supported by our Catholic members.  Over time, however, the Catholic community found that the two groups had different views on the future use of the church building, and since it belonged to the Lutheran members, theirs was the view which prevailed.  The disagreement highlighted our need to develop our own individual identity as an ECC church, so we sought a trial separation from the Lutheran community.

Knowing our commitment to remaining “in the city for good,” Fr. Michael Nicosia, ECC Bishop Krebs’s Regional Vicar at the time, introduced us to Sixth Avenue United Church of Christ—they had once before hosted an ECC community. Since 2021 it’s been our new home. With the UCC community we’re blessed to have a broader understanding of ecumenism as we collaborate in worship and mission.