The story of Burns Memorial begins in the early 1950s, when Aurora was changing rapidly.

New neighborhoods were spreading across former farmland east of Denver, driven in part by the postwar housing boom and the growth surrounding nearby Fitzsimons Army Hospital and Lowry Air Force Base. Among them was Hoffman Town (soon known as Hoffman Heights), a new community that needed not only houses, but schools, parks, shops, churches, and other institutions of community life. The City of Aurora’s historic survey describes this period as an important chapter in the transformation of postwar Aurora.

Burns Memorial grew out of that moment.

A group of 95 people recognized the need for a Methodist congregation to serve the growing community.

With the support of Dr. Henry L. Weiss, Superintendent of the Denver District of The Methodist Church, the emerging congregation and the Rev. Dean Shaw were permitted to purchase a house at 1000 Ursula Street. It would serve simultaneously as the Shaw family’s home, the church parsonage, and Burns Memorial’s first place of worship.

What followed was an extraordinary experiment in congregational life.

Every weekend, the Shaw family effectively turned its home over to the congregation.

On Saturday evenings, the family’s personal belongings were gathered into one bedroom while folding chairs were arranged throughout the house. By Sunday morning, nearly every available space had acquired a church function. The kitchen became a classroom. Sunday School attendance averaged approximately 150 to 200 children, requiring two sessions of both worship and Sunday School. Worship itself took place in the home’s heated garage.

And Sunday was only part of the story.

During the week, Burns operated a kindergarten serving approximately 120 children at a time when the rapidly growing area lacked sufficient public-school space. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, children’s groups, choir rehearsals, church committees, youth fellowships, and fellowship dinners all passed through the Shaw home. Even the family sitting room doubled as the church office. Meanwhile, Rev. Shaw was studying full-time at Iliff School of Theology.

By the end of Burns Memorial’s first year, the congregation had grown to 186 members.

1000 Ursula Street: the Shaw family home, parsonage, Sunday School, church office, and first home of Burns Memorial.

The unusual life of the young congregation soon attracted attention far beyond Aurora.

On June 21, 1954, LIFE magazine published a photographic feature titled “Sunday’s a Busy Day.” Beginning on page 55, the story followed the Rev. Dean Porter Shaw and the remarkable Sunday routine surrounding Burns Memorial. Google Books has digitized the complete original issue.

The house at 1000 Ursula could sustain the congregation only for so long.

As Burns grew, plans moved forward for a permanent church home at East 11th Avenue and Newark Street. Burns Memorial’s own historical record gives June 6, 1954 as the date of the groundbreaking for a new sanctuary and notes that the LIFE coverage also recorded the event.

The move also connected two parts of Burns’ story. The congregation had been born in the newly developed Hoffman Heights community, while its permanent church home was established nearby at 11th and Newark, in the portion of Original Aurora now known as the Del Mar Parkway neighborhood. The City of Aurora identifies the area from approximately East 14th Avenue south toward East 6th Avenue as Del Mar Parkway.

More than seventy years later, Burns Memorial continues to worship at that Newark Street location.

The Rev. Dean Shaw’s ministry extended beyond the walls of the young congregation.

In 1955, a dramatic rescue captivated Aurora after a young child, David Counterman, became trapped in a well. An account preserved by the Aurora Historical Society records that while the rescue effort was underway, Rev. Shaw came to the Counterman home and sat and prayed with the child’s mother.

It is a small episode, but a revealing one: from its earliest years, Burns Memorial’s clergy and congregation were part of the life of the surrounding community.

More than a decade after the congregation first moved to Newark Street, Burns Memorial entered another major period of construction.

A surviving Colorado court record provides an unusually precise historical detail: a major project involving the church and sanctuary was completed in October 1966.

The building itself preserves another remarkable piece of that story.

On its exterior is a granite cornerstone inscribed:

BURNS MEMORIAL METHODIST CHURCH

LAID BY M.W. GRAND LODGE A.F. & A.M. OF COLORADO

A.L. 5966 — A.D. 1966

The stone bears the Square and Compasses and records that the cornerstone was formally laid by the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of Colorado. Its two dates give the year both conventionally, A.D. 1966, and according to the traditional Masonic Anno Lucis calendar, A.L. 5966.

Burns Memorial was founded as Burns Memorial Methodist Church. The word United came later.

On April 23, 1968, The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church joined at the Uniting Conference in Dallas to form The United Methodist Church. Burns Memorial consequently became Burns Memorial United Methodist Church.

The familiar United Methodist Cross and Flame was adopted later that same year.

Burns Memorial’s history continued to develop as Aurora itself became a larger and more culturally varied city.

A Denver Metro District directory records that a Tongan Fellowship has met at Burns since 1998. By 2001, Rocky Mountain Conference records show Paula Latu serving the Burns Memorial Tongan Fellowship, and the fellowship appears in later conference records as an established Methodist worshiping community.

Over the years, the Tongan community has become an enduring part of the Christian life associated with Burns Memorial, bringing its own traditions of worship, music, fellowship, leadership, and service while sharing in the wider Methodist connection.

Today, Burns remains home to both English-speaking and Tongan-speaking worshiping communities.

Some of Burns Memorial’s history can still be heard.

In a 2019 notice seeking a church organist, the Mountain Sky Conference described Burns Memorial’s instrument as a “150-year-old pipe organ.” If that description is accurate, the instrument predates Burns Memorial itself by many decades.

For generations at Burns, the organ has supported congregational singing, sacred music, weddings, funerals, holy days, and Sunday worship.

Burns Memorial has changed considerably since those first Sundays at 1000 Ursula Street.

The folding chairs no longer need to be set up throughout the Shaw family home. The kitchen no longer becomes a Sunday School classroom, and worship no longer takes place in a heated garage.

But much of the purpose that animated Burns Memorial from the beginning remains recognizable: a community gathered to worship God, grow in Christian faith, care for one another, and serve its neighbors.

Generations have worshiped at Burns. Children have been baptized and confirmed, couples married, loved ones commended to God, hymns sung, sermons preached, meals shared, friendships formed, and neighbors served.

The congregation has grown, changed, welcomed new communities, and adapted to a changing Aurora. The building itself bears witness to that story—from the sanctuary and its historic organ to the Masonic cornerstone set into its walls.

Burns Memorial receives that history with gratitude while continuing the work entrusted to the Church in the present.

The people change. The community grows. The work of the Church continues.