Church, community rises from former strip club

On the north side of Fort Collins, amid the poverty and industry of the Mulberry corridor, stands the pale yellow building that once held Fort Collins' only strip club.

Nearly three years after A Hunt Club shut its doors for the last time, the aromas of perfume, booze and cigarettes are a distant memory in the building.

Today, souls filing into 400 S. Link Lane are in search of a higher calling. The building has taken a 180-degree turn since its owner found God and sold it to Timberline Church in September 2013. Timberline later transferred it to The Genesis Project, a church startup led by Timberline's former executive pastor Rob Cowles.

Genesis Project opened its doors on Feb. 8, 2015. Genesis Coffee followed in November. On Sundays, 400 people flood the building's three services, more than quadruple the church's founding group of 80 to 90 regular attendees.

HELPING OTHERS:  Family struggles to find home after fleeing violence

Stripper poles and stages were torn down to make room for an auditorium where grandmas and grandpas sit next to bikers, recovering alcoholics, drug addicts and a handful of A Hunt Club's former entertainers.

"We're pretty big on the idea that there's no us and them," Cowles said. "There's only us."

It's that philosophy that helped Shannon Kull, 37, find a family in the church's membership after 26 years of meth and cocaine addiction. Kull had moved to Colorado from Texas to "get a better start" and move beyond addiction, which had cost her custody of her three children.

She was living in motels along the Mulberry Corridor when a couple extended an open invitation to Genesis Project, offering the carless woman a ride. She was shocked to find nothing but "love" inside the church's walls.

LEADERSHIP:  High school students train with Poudre Fire Authority

Nearly two years later, Kull is a regular at Sunday church services and weekly activities. She's been clean for two years, found housing and has regained custody of her children. She "feels so loved."

"They don't care if you haven't changed clothes in six days and smell to high heaven," she said. "They just hug you and welcome you in."

If the building Kull now considers a second home could talk, it might also tell a story of restoration and love. Following a transformation that cost roughly $600,000 and years of effort, Sunday school classrooms are held in a space occupied by the strip club's VIP area for nearly 25 years. Where the bar once stood is Genesis Coffee, open daily during the week.

The transformation from "a building in shambles," as Cowles described the property in August 2014, to a community life center and church would have been more costly if several businesses and well-wishers hadn't donated or discounted their services.

"It took a while to figure out how to remodel it," Cowles said. "We weren't even sure we could remodel it. It was in a really bad shape."

Though Cowles is happy to see the ministry grow, he's careful to point out that Sunday mornings are a small piece in the building's weekly life.

During the week, Genesis Project is home to a second community life center for The Matthews House, a nonprofit serving at-risk youth and families in Fort Collins. Genesis Project volunteers support the group "by loving on the people that come through these doors."

An Alcoholics Anonymous group offers community to those battling addiction.

RELIGION:  Fort Collins church works to defy decline in faith

During the school year, a bus pulls up in the afternoon and laughing kids bustle in to work on homework until their parents get home. In the summer, Genesis Project, in partnership with The Matthews House, hosts one of 10 Food Bank for Larimer County Kids Cafe sites.

Soon, jobs skills training will open to youth and young adults at Genesis Coffee, expanding to restaurant skills training when the church finishes renovating its commercial kitchen.

Three times a year, four homeless families find respite at the church building through Faith Family Hospitality.

Once a month, church members scatter in the community to perform random acts of kindness — everything from painting homes in a neighboring trailer park to passing out quarters at the laundromat, "no strings attached."

For Cowles, who took a leap of faith to leave the financial and emotional security of employment at Timberline Church, the community Genesis Project is building is renewal not just of a former strip club, but of his own faith.

"We would rather fail in the direction of loving people, knowing that's God's heart, than succeed at remaining safe and comfortable and missing the adventure this is," Cowles said. "It's messy and confusing. There are way more grey areas in my life than there ever used to be. But it feels a lot more simply now than it ever has for me."

He's learned that everyone has a story. While Cowles said he still believes in right and wrong, he's found himself judging people less and loving them more.

"Who am I to judge what they're facing right now?" he said. "I might be dead if I went through that they went through."

REDTAIL COFFEE:  Coffee shop that employs homeless faces money woes

Cowles' renewed sense of compassion and service, which has spread to his church's members, drew Dedria Johnson, 43, to give faith another chance.

The single mother of six and grandmother of two first visited the church with the Faith Family Hospitality program, which houses four homeless families through a collaborative of 30 religious groups, when she and her family were thrust into homelessness after her husband left her for another woman in their previous church. Genesis Project was their first in a series of temporary homes over nearly eight months of homelessness, but the acceptance and support of the church's volunteers drew Johnson to return Sunday after Sunday, regardless of whether she was staying at the church.

When she was able to move out of homelessness, Genesis Project, which she has come to call home, helped the single mom and her kids furnish their home, start a cleaning business and start her own salon.

"I was hurt, I was broke and I had nothing," Johnson said. "They fixed it. ... They knew I could be more than what I was when I came."

Genesis Project/Genesis Coffee

The Genesis Project, 400 S. Link Lane, has three Sunday church services: 8:30 a.m., 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. 

Genesis Coffee is open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays.

Follow Sarah Jane Kyle on Twitter @sarahja nekyle or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/reportersarahjane. Keep up with social issues in Northern Colorado by subscribing to the Life Connected newsletter.