Worshippers at Old Country Church are well-versed in bluegrass

On Saturday nights, a small congregation trickles into the Old Country Church for a worship service in which banjos, fiddles and various stringed instruments are as plentiful as people.
Virtuosity goes hand in hand with virtue here.
Under the white steeple and behind the red-brick facade on Pierce Street in Lakewood, bluegrass is blooming as thick as Appalachia's. Some call it gospelgrass.
Bass fiddler Murl Glaze started this Saturday-night service almost a decade ago. He runs church operations — scheduling visiting ministers and managing things.
"I'm the janitor and everything else," Glaze says.
The Old Country Church — which shares space, and some congregants, with the Central Bible Church — relies on guest preachers.
This Saturday night, it is Claud Pettit, 83, who helps direct people toward the front pews by telling them, "The seats are all the same price tonight." Free.
Ordained more than 60 years ago, Pettit was first called "The Old Country Parson" while still in his 30s, when he hosted an early radio show by that name in Denver.
Seven musicians lead off the night with a foot-stomper appropriately called "The Old Country Church."
"There with Mother we went, and our Sundays were spent, with our friends at the old country church," they sing.
Guitar player and singer Tim Cutforth prays aloud: "Let every word we say and sing honor you tonight."
More prayer petitions reveal how tightly knit the group is.
"Did I tell you all about my biopsies?" a woman asks of the room. Many people call out in the affirmative.
"Well, praise the Lord," she continues, "they're benign."
Next, a man describes how a wave at a reservoir caused him to lose his footing and nearly drown during a fishing trip. Before long, the congregation is dedicating to him a rousing rendition of "Higher Ground."
Pettit, who is "kind of retired," he says, keeps the sermon short and sweet because he knows this older but nonetheless lively group prefers to sing its praises.
When the short musical service ends upstairs, the congregation heads to the church basement, where the numbers swell slightly for the regular jam session and refreshments.
"We're trying to get more of them upstairs too," Cutforth says, looking at the new arrivals.
Marcia Hurley, wife of guitar-playing, John Denver-loving Dan Hurley, says her husband comes because he loves the music and works Sunday mornings.
"It's real comfortable here," she says. "The people are so nice."
The musicians take requests, which soon lead to yodeling by Joan Crippen, whose banjo is almost as tall as she is.
And so it goes for a couple of hours, with versatile musicians trading instruments — a guitar is swapped for a steel guitar. Someone grabs a mandolin. There is a balalaika.
"I like the fellowship and the music, of course," says Alicia Green, who has attended for about five years. "I got my singing debut here — when I was 70."