CrossPurpose
“What if we gave the best 30 years of our lives to one place and one people?”
By Katie Lukashow
CrossPurpose is a place where lives intertwine, barriers dissolve, and deep, authentic relationships are formed. It is a nonprofit organization that stands at the intersection of history and hope in the northeast Denver neighborhoods shaped by waves of migration and ongoing tension between gentrification and community resilience. At CrossPurpose, people from vastly different backgrounds—former gang members, single mothers, wealthy business leaders, refugees, and longtime community residents—gather at shared tables. They come together not as beneficiaries and benefactors, but as family.
Jason Janz, cofounder of CrossPurpose, and a small group of committed friends, asked themselves a radical question: What if we gave the best 30 years of our lives to one place and one people? Their collective answer became CrossPurpose, a community who walks with people from generational poverty to generational wealth.
CrossPurpose is built on the belief that poverty is not just a lack of resources—it is a lack of opportunity, relationships, and hope. While many nonprofits focus on alleviating immediate need, CrossPurpose embodies what Jason Janz describes as "expensive love"—the kind that demands more than a single donation or uncostly act of charity. It requires presence, commitment, and mutual transformation. This “expensive love” is lived out not only in job training and career development, but in advocating for affordable housing, supporting mental health care, and ensuring families have access to financial stability.
Rooting CrossPurpose in northeast Denver was intentional. This neighborhood, once the heart of Denver’s African American community, holds a complex history. It has seen the rise of jazz clubs and thriving small businesses, followed by redlining, economic decline, and more recently, rapid gentrification. Walking its streets, one can feel the tension between past and future, where century-old churches stand beside high-end coffee shops and new apartment complexes.
For many longtime residents, the question is not just about economic opportunity but about whether they will have a place in their own neighborhood’s future. CrossPurpose has committed to ensuring they do. By investing in homeownership, job creation, and community leadership, CrossPurpose is ensuring that longtime residents are not displaced but instead become builders of their neighborhood’s future. This is not charity—it is restoration. Janz describes the vision: “I would hope that 50 years from now, someone walking through this neighborhood would say, ‘I may not be a Christian, but those people—what they did here—that’s what Jesus must have looked like when he walked the earth.’”
CrossPurpose has helped over 1,000 individuals move out of poverty in the Denver metro area since its founding. They are not just filling a gap in human services—they are an organization changing the landscape of opportunity in the city.
CrossPurpose operates on the belief that transformation happens through relationships. And relationships require physical presence. Every week, program participants—known as Leaders—sit down for meals with volunteers, allies, and staff in a CrossPurpose facility, a place filled with laughter, storytelling, and the sound of clinking dishes. Meals are moments where people who may never have met otherwise begin to see each other as neighbors.
In a city where the cost of living rises by the day and where economic divides often dictate who belongs, CrossPurpose stands as a counter-narrative. It is a reminder that the way forward is not found in isolation but in shared struggle and shared hope. It is a place where the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, meet on equal ground. It is a place where heaven touches earth through the simple yet profound act of knowing and loving one’s neighbor. CrossPurpose is a sacred place.
Thank you to Jason Janz for his conversation and contribution to this article.
