About us

Our Story

In 2008, about a dozen people organized around a passion to live out their faith differently. They felt deeply burdened and convicted about doing a deep walk with the poor to engage areas of their faith they believed were dormant. As one of our founders said, “We started this to save our own souls.”

That core group sought to answer to the question, “What would it be like if we gave the best 30 years of our lives to one mission with one people in one place?”

So, they made an all-in commitment to the neighborhood of Northeast Denver to plant deep roots and model a ministry of longevity and lasting impact.

A Church With A Desire to Serve

The journey began with the founding of Providence Bible Church, where one of the values was that all members be involved in the community, modeling the life of Jesus by loving our neighbors through self-sacrifice.

As a result, we started ministries to single moms, men and women leaving incarceration, refugees, and families in poverty. All of these aligned with a desire to go to the redemptive edge and walk alongside people society had left behind.

Several members of the founding team took jobs in local schools to serve and learn and love their neighbors. After several years of this work, it became obvious that despite helping thousands of people, there was a lack of transformational change.

The problem was not with our neighbors, it was with us.

We mistakenly thought that providing relief in the form of food, clothing, backpacks, computer labs, Christmas gifts, and turkey dinners was the solution. Truthfully, the system that created conditions which caused poverty to spread needed expensive love. We were convicted by the thought that the biblical idea of justice was helping the neighbor until the need was completely met.

The Nonprofit Emerges

In 2012, we began merging all of the ministries into a separate community development non-profit with its own board and staff. Instead of helping thousands, we focused on 19 families with the promise that if they put in the work, we would do all we could to not just help them in poverty, but to help them escape poverty for life. In 2014, we rebranded as CrossPurpose. CrossPurpose means “a contrary aim.” We wanted to model a different way, a more dignified and holistic way, of walking with our neighbors all the way out of poverty. 

We approached this challenge holistically because while poverty shows its effects financially, the solution is often relational and spiritual. This informed what is now the mission of CrossPurpose: “to abolish economic, relational, and spiritual poverty through career and community development.”

To this end, we doubled down on building social capital with our families and lived by the maxim, “There is no significant change without a significant relationship.” For the last ten years, our weekly family dinners have been the place where lifelong friendships have been formed between our families, volunteers, donors, and staff.

CrossPurpose today

In 2017, we received a building to lease for $1/year. With an extensive remodel, this became our beautiful Northeast Denver headquarters designed with and for the community. We believe that space matters and we desire that when our neighbors come through the doors, we look like part of the solution, not part of the problem. 

In 2020, we completed our first five-year plan and saw 1,000 men, women, and children escape poverty.

At the start of 2021, we launched our second five-year plan which includes scaling to four locations (Northeast Denver, Englewood, Arvada, and Aurora) serving a total of 800 families per year. By the end of 2025, our dream is to see a total of 5,000 Denver neighbors break out of poverty and achieve their dreams. 

Since the founding days, God has blessed the ministry and we’ve seen radical transformation in our own lives. Our tagline is “Live Different Together.” The work we do is hard and also deeply rewarding, and we’re not going anywhere. Our sole focus is to build a legacy institution of excellence serving thousands of neighbors for decades to come.

We are in this for generational change. Come along on the journey of seeing transformation in the lives of our neighbors…but most importantly in yours.

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