top of page

About Us

A hub for healing community, social action, and creative collaboration The Refuge is deeply dedicated to centering those who fall through the cracks of life and faith, living out our shared values in tangible ways, non-hierarchical team leadership, and collaborating with community partners because we are always better together. 

Our Teams

Community of people sitting around cafe tables in the refuge main area

The Refuge is dedicated to inclusive and team leadership. Currently, three teams of leaders serve The Refuge: 

  • Serve and Sustain -This group of seven people facilitates, nurtures and supports the life of our community, and makes decisions, with input from our two other teams, when necessary.

  • Community Life - Our many on-the-ground leaders, who help catalyze different ministries of The Refuge, meet regularly for updates and encouragement regarding: Community Outreach, Refuge Café, Refuge Kids, Practical Needs, Single Moms, Social Justice and Creation Care, Advocates Learning Lab, Finances, Recovery, Facilities, Contemplative Arts, Spiritual Formation Sundays, Refuge Reads, #NatureHeals, 12 Steps for Anti-Racism Work, Refuge Rainbow, #dogchurch, the Broomfield Cares Mobile Outreach Team and more.  

  • Advisory - This group of seven leaders from outside our community offer us wisdom, encouragement, and, when needed regarding particular challenges, advice.

People sitting around long table outdoors under lighted pergola

We also always leave open seats for new and future friends and team members to join us in making dreams reality. 

Our Values ... Are the very roots of our community

Inspired by the ways of Jesus, we gather around these shared values:

 

PRESENCE

  • Showing up authentically as we are, owning our stories, and allowing ourselves to belong.

  • Walking with each other as fellow strugglers and seekers of Christ’s hope.

  • Following Jesus’ example of giving and receiving.

ENGAGEMENT

  • Serving and advocating for people in need, especially those who have been forgotten, oppressed or marginalized.

  • Dialoging with each other and with others in the midst of differences and opinions and beliefs.

  • Collaborating with other faith communities, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations to serve others and cultivate unity together.

  • Protecting what is good and restoring what is broken in God’s creation.

TRANSFORMATION

  • Seeing God—Three in One—as the source and center of all we are and all we do.

  • Wrestling with our questions, doubts, and dreams in humility and authenticity as we grow in our relationship with God, others, and ourselves.

  • Healing and recovering from past hurts, unhealthy patterns, and distorted images of God.

  • Honoring the Bible as our story—God’s words for us as the living text of our Christian faith, knowing we all may interpret the Scriptures differently.

WELCOME

  • Welcoming everyone with love, dignity, and hospitality as best we can.

  • Practicing equality in our experiences and leadership, where each person’s voice and gifts are welcomed and valued.

  • Sharing our communion table with all who want to take part.

  • Creating safe spaces for recovery, healing, and learning as we watch strangers become family.

CREATIVITY 

  • Appreciating God as Creator of life, beauty, and enjoyment.

  • Welcoming diverse experiences for encountering and worshipping God.

  • Calling out God’s image in each other and restoring dignity through encouraging creative expression.

CELEBRATION

  • Laughing, crying, and eating together.

  • Throwing parties, honoring courage and marking milestones, and cherishing annual traditions.

  • Celebrating God’s work in our lives, our community, the world.

three people around small table with a mug and a bingo cage
people gathered around table creating with colored sand in bottles and trays
computer screen with zoom meeting in session
collage reflecting The Refuge Values: Presence, people holding candles, engagement, person playing guitar and singing in front of crowd, transformation, person with arms up and birds flying, creativity, group of people showing artwork, welcome, hands stacked in circle, celebration, group of refuge community members

Land Acknowledgement and Our Invitation to Community 

We read this aloud at the beginning of many of our gatherings...

Today, in community, we recognize and acknowledge that the Refuge sits on the traditional lands of the Hinono’eino’, the Tsitsistas and the Nu-uci, known more widely as the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and the Ute nations. Through broken treaties, dehumanization and violence, our settler predecessors displaced these Indigenous peoples from their homelands, which they had stewarded for generation upon generation without entitlement as “private property” or exploitation as “natural resources.”

 

Yet, these nations and their people are alive and strong today, in both local urban and suburban communities, and in reservation settings in Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana and Southwestern Colorado.

 

These things are important to know and remember and to act upon in a good way, because we are part of this story.

The Refuge is a hub for healing community, social action, and creative collaboration, serving in Broomfield since 2006. We are young, old, poor, rich, single, married, gay, straight, evangelical, progressive, binary, non-binary, introverts, extroverts, born-here, born-elsewhere, eager, tired, book-smart, street-smart, certain, doubting, hurting, thriving.

​

We gather in many different ways

​

but are bound together by our shared values of presence, engagement, transformation, welcome, creativity, and celebration.

​

Across our differences,

​

We all give, we all receive.

​

We’re all equal, we’re all valued. We’re all healing, we’re all wrestling. We’re all learning, we all need grace.

​

Together, let’s listen for God. 

​

Open ourselves to Love. 

​

Prepare to be challenged. 

​

Be a refuge.

What we did last year

bottom of page