Denver Seminary

HOLY INTERRUPTION 8 SPRING 2021 PERMISSION TO DREAM By Andrea Weyand F For nearly a decade, Isaac Olivarez, a Denver Seminary MA in New Testament student, had been ministering on the streets of Denver, holding Thursday evening dinner church with some of the city's most marginalized residents. Each week, well over 100 people shared in worship and a meal at Urban Outreach Denver, a hybrid church/ nonprofit he and his wife Jaime founded in 2012. For two years, Isaac and Jaime tried to add a traditional Sunday worship to their ministry, but though their friends and volunteers came, the homeless did not. Nevertheless, Isaac, Jaime, and a host of volunteers continued to share meals with those who showed up on Thursday evenings, insisting they take seconds or even thirds, and packing up leftover food to distribute to even more people. "We had become a dinner church before we even knew what that was," Isaac says. "Our act of worship is eating meals together around the table," he adds, an apt statement from a pastor who is most passionate about the book of Luke, especially as it relates to sharing meals at a table. Along with meals, Isaac and several volunteers provide clothing, blankets, jackets, bus passes, and prayer to homeless people they meet in parks, on the streets, and other places they connect. Isaac also shares a ten-minute "Christ Story," which centers around the gospel, because, as he says, "The marginalized deserve to be more than the recipients of our outreach; they deserve a church of their own full inclusion." But in March 2020, COVID-19 restrictions meant Isaac and the team at Urban Outreach Denver would have to shift how they served the needs of those most vulnerable. Rather than gathering for dinners, they set up outside of their building and passed out meals from the sidewalk. Inside, their

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