Peak Community Church is a downtown Fort Collins congregation at 500 Mathews St., known for pairing historic Christian belief with open-ended questions about faith, art, creation, and public life. Its compact identity is “a downtown church of the people who are here.” That welcome is joined by a desire to “grow deep roots, and far reaching branches.” Peak does not treat church as a show. It describes a safe place where people need not be fixed, neighbors walk alongside one another, and a community tries to make a difference in Fort Collins.
Sunday at 9:00, Then Coffee and Conversation
Sunday worship begins at 9:00 a.m. at 500 Mathews St. and is open to all. The gathering includes singing and a sermon. Afterward, coffee and conversation extend the Sunday rhythm and give people space to meet one another. The service is held in downtown Fort Collins, and Peak frames worship around participation and understanding rather than performance alone.
Children are not treated as an appendage to that gathering. They have sustained formation, clear safety practices, and meaningful roles in the life of the congregation.
Wednesday Prayer, Study, and Youth
Peak's midweek rhythm includes four regular gatherings:
- Mid-week Morning Prayer: Wednesdays from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m. in the sanctuary. The gathering is open to all.
- Bible Study: Wednesdays from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the meeting room next to the sanctuary. This gathering is also open to all.
- Women's Bible Study: Wednesdays from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.
- Youth Group: Wednesdays from 6:45 to 8:15 p.m. at the church for students in grades 6 through 12.
The youth evening includes snacks and games. Conversation moves among God, the Bible, and being a person, followed by prayer for one another. Younger children also have recurring activities beyond Sunday, including bike rides, time at the park, singing, and a summer day camp.
Children Stay in the Life of the Church
Peak wants children to hear the broad story of God's love and find their place within it. Its teaching uses hands-on Bible lessons in a safe, engaging setting, with particular attention to children who are neurodiverse. Nursery supervision begins when the service begins for children ages 0 through preschool. Parents may use the nursery, but children are equally welcome to remain in the service for the whole gathering.
Kindergarten through fifth graders join the adults in singing and are then invited to guided instruction and growth in faith during the sermon. The curriculum is adapted from Young Children and Worship and Godly Play. Beginning in grade 6, young people are invited to participate in the entire service. They commonly serve by running the sound system, playing music, assisting with classes, and taking other responsibilities within church life.
Safety is treated as both physical and psychological care. More than one adult is always present with children, and every adult working with them has passed a background check. Periodic activities include bike rides, park visits, and singing, while summer day camp combines learning about God with play. The guiding principle is simple: children are part of the congregation, not merely a separate program attached to it.
Humble Orthodoxy and the Nicene Creed
The center of Peak's belief is not the congregation but God, specifically God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Peak calls its theological posture “humble orthodoxy.” The congregation trusts the oldest creeds, honors Christian tradition, and remains open to learning something new. That combination places continuity and curiosity together rather than treating them as opposites.
The Nicene Creed gives the community much of its shared language. Peak affirms one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible. It confesses one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, was buried, rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will return in glory. Jesus Christ is confessed as God of God, Light of Light, and very God of very God.
The creed also names the Holy Spirit as Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, is worshiped and glorified with the Father and Son, and spoke through the prophets. Peak affirms one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, one baptism for the remission of sins, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. These are not presented as antiquated words to be hurried past. They are the convictions around which the church's worship, teaching, and life together are organized.
A Non-Non-Denominational Church of God Congregation
Peak calls itself “non-non-denominational,” a deliberate phrase meaning that it is not against tradition. The church honors the past, resists denominational division, and deliberately builds connections across denominational lines in Fort Collins. At the same time, it does not claim to have no denominational ties. Peak belongs to the family called Church of God headquartered in Anderson, Indiana, and it traces its roots to the Church of God Restoration Movement.
The Church of God developed as a movement of unity and holiness after the Civil War in a deeply divided nation. Its founders were motivated by Jesus to cross racial, denominational, and gender divisions. That history is part of Peak's identity, but its present connections are not confined to one organization. Peak is also connected to Heartedge, an international, ecumenical church renewal movement that develops churches around compassion, commerce, culture, and congregation.
Peak is proud to be the only congregation participating in both the Fort Collins Church Network and the Fort Collins Interfaith Council. Its pastor chairs the board of Outreach Fort Collins, a nonprofit street outreach organization. These connections place Peak's downtown congregation within the wider religious and civic life of Fort Collins without defining the church as the center of that life.
Learning by Staying With the Questions
A distinctive part of Peak's identity is its willingness to remain with difficult questions. Pastor Eddy's approach to hard biblical passages begins with four practices: read closely, read in context, recognize that direct application can be complicated, and continue wrestling when ambiguity remains. The church does not treat every difficult text as having a simple private meaning. Peak's teaching allows space for surprise, struggle, and the possibility that understanding may grow over time.
That same spirit shapes the reading of Scripture as a practice of joy rather than obligation. Pastor Eddy has described three barriers: translations that feel inaccessible, questions that seem to have no answers, and the assumption that every verse must be a direct message for the individual reader. He encourages people to use accessible translations, recognize that other readers have asked similar questions, and notice the literary kind of each biblical book. Psalms are poetry, Chronicles is history, the Gospels are biography, and Paul's letters are letters written to particular communities in particular situations.
Peak extends the same imaginative discipline to worship and the arts. Visual art has a place in the church's life, including an art gallery. The argument is not that art belongs only to artists or people who think of themselves as imaginative. Everyone needs imagination to be faithful because the language of Scripture continually calls people to picture, interpret, and inhabit ideas. Jesus' parables and Paul's language about the Spirit ask readers to imagine faithful action, not merely acquire information about it. Sermons are available online, but this spirit of inquiry reaches well beyond a formal lecture or class.
Small Good Things, Slow Repair, and Public Faith
Peak's vision draws on the poetry of Wendell Berry and the charge to “Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.” The church understands lasting vision as patient, small, and slow work: getting to know a neighbor, building compost, learning to pray, baking, or teaching a children's class. Among Peak's named practices is making a meal for a family sheltering in its building. Another is paying attention to a coworker, teenager, or neighbor through prayer and conversation. Even sharing bread dipped in wine can become part of the work. Peak imagines these acts as part of a growing sequoia of faith, hope, and love, directed toward a future in which creation is restored.
The church also uses the image of a field hospital. Its work is to attend to wounds, bind them, run toward places of need, and help people heal. That image shifts the church away from self-protection and toward readiness. Formation for a community means learning how to serve when trouble arrives rather than using the congregation only as a protected enclave.
Peak has drawn a deliberate distinction between Christian worship and national allegiance. Its teaching has expressed gratitude for life in the United States, included prayer for elected officials, and supported public criticism of decisions and actions. At the same time, worship does not become a celebration of the nation through flags or hymns that place national identity alongside Christian worship. Peak describes Christians as pilgrims and ambassadors whose allegiance belongs to God, even while they remain deeply involved in civic life.
Local public life is treated as neighborly work rather than a series of abstract campaigns. Peak's teaching has focused on the ordinary details of city government, including land-use codes, utility rates, easements, curb cuts, and long public meetings. The argument is that sustained attention to these details is a form of seeking the welfare of a community. Sunday worship has a comparable purpose. The word “liturgy” means “the work of the people,” and Peak connects the congregation's Sunday gathering with the practical work of articulating a common good under the rule of Jesus Christ and the hope of God's kingdom.
The Whole Property as a Garden
Creation care reaches across Peak's entire property. Rico Lighthouse recorded the plants found from the edges of the parking lot to the back of the building and the strip of land along Mulberry St. His work treated the property as more than a collection of mulched areas. It was land given to the church for stewardship, a living garden in which people and plants continually affect one another. Old ash trees that had long stood near the property became part of that sense of continuity, while annuals, reseeding plants, birds, insects, and animals kept the garden changing.
Lighthouse's guiding conviction is, “There are no weeds in this Garden.” The statement does not deny that some plants are difficult or unwelcome. It begins instead with the idea that every plant was created by God for a purpose and that people may need to spend more time learning what that purpose is. The presence of bindweed can still call for practical action, but its growth can also prompt a person to reconsider whether the plant or the expectation should change. The underlying rhythm is to ask, study, pray, and tend.
Lighthouse typed the plant descriptions on a 1931 Remington Portable typewriter, leaving the marks of a process without spellcheck, a delete button, or easy correction. Mistakes and missing apostrophes became part of the work rather than something concealed. The collection was designed to grow as the land changed, with space for further observations and additions. That approach fits Peak's wider conviction that faith, curiosity, and care for creation belong together. Learning about a bee, a tree, a beetle, or a changing season becomes another way of paying attention to the world and to its Creator.
Rooted in Faith, Growing in Practice
Pastor Eddy's teaching moves among Scripture, art, dance, difficult texts, public life, hospitality, and the natural world, but these subjects repeatedly return to the same needs: attentiveness, joy, responsibility, and a willingness to be changed. Peak's beliefs are not separated from the way people gather, teach children, study the Bible, pray, create, eat, work, and meet one another in Fort Collins.
At 500 Mathews St., Peak Community Church remains a downtown community built around Sunday worship, shared study, children's formation, care for creation, and sustained engagement with the city. It does not need to turn its history into a monument. Its own image is more fitting: roots growing deep, branches reaching far, and good work still being planted.