AfterHours Sermon
AfterHours Denver: Whats the story...
In a nutshell:
AfterHours Denver, is a faith and action community that began in July of 2011 to serve the poor and unchurched of metro Denver.
We gather in bars, beer coasters are our main form of advertising and we pay to have our ads in the urinals of some of the city’s most popular pubs, bars and taverns. Our music is from the preacher’s iPod and we prefer discussions to sermons.
Rev. Jerry Herships is the founder, Chief Love Monger and Lead Spiritual Entrepreneur of AfterHours Denver. A former bartender, he was out of the church for over a decade before wandering back. He is a certified sommelier. He has been a mall Santa.
AfterHours Denver believes Jesus had it figured out and we try to do our best to live our life the way he lived his. As a result, we are in the city’s parks feeding the homeless and forgotten six days a week. We hand out food, water, socks and communion. We also hand out our fair share of love. We began as a ministry out of another church a few years back and to date, we have handed out over 15,000 lunches to the hungry and hurting.
We aren’t big into dogma and creeds. We are intentionally low-tech. We are trying our best to figure out how to connect to God in an urban context. If we had a mission statement it would be, “Love God/Love People.” We believe in doing good & God, different. We are church for people that don’t do church.
Jerry and AfterHours on YouTube
What we’re about
We have felt that there is a void in the God business. People that have good energy and that want to be a part of something bigger. People that have finely tuned B.S. antenna. People that want to wrestle with the questions and that don't need easy answers. People that are not ok with the staus quo when it comes to connecting to God. We hope we are, in some way an answer for some people.
We will never claim to have it all figured out. Honestly, we don't even know if this will work. But we are having a blast so far. We are doing God and church different and so far we have fed over 15,000 people. That doesn't suck.
Our get togethers with God have been going great the past few months. There seems to be a number of people that want to connect with God in new and different ways. Simply put, a more relaxed way to "do God". We've collected OVER 250 lbs. of food for the food bank at Denver Urban Ministries (DenUM) at our first service and have continued to collect food for our local food banks because the need is so great. Church needs to go beyond the walls of the building and AfterHours Denver is proving that is exactly what church can do!
Every time we get together, we make over 50 PB&J lunches that we give away to the homeless the very next day (Service in the service.) Feeding people is our Call to Worship. Since we started this ministry, we have helped feed thousands of people this way. We are now our own faith community and doing things in our own unique way.
We're a bit of an odd duck. It's not unusual to have a Pastor from other churches drop by and try to figure out what we are up to (they usually aren't quite sure what to make of us at first). It's a diverse crowd that does church in a pub: folks from the homeless community, a judge, a bartender, an agnostic and a college student will often be sitting around the same table. Sounds like the beginning to a joke...because...well, technically, THEY ALL WALKED INTO A BAR! The mood is laid back and fun, kinda like I think God wants it (it is supposed to be "Good News"). The music has been anything from 60's soul (Bill Withers and Al Green) to Delta blues (Son House and Muddy Waters) to Mainstream (Tom Waits and Pink Floyd...if you consider them mainstream). The sermons are usually short... (also kinda like I think God wants it!). We've also had some great discussion because we don't think all the wisdom in the room comes just from the person up front. All in all, we celebrate God in the world, focus on putting more love out into the streets and believe if we try to love God and each other the rest kinda just falls into place...
