"Spiritual Tune-up Service Bay," said the sign. "Everyone Is Allowed Beyond This Point."

That would include Faye Schuman, a youthfully slim 74-year-old with a porcelain complexion and a cloud of snow-white hair. Shy, well-spoken, with hints of an adventurous past, Schuman took time on a glorious spring Sunday to put the spark back in her spiritual engine.

This is Tune Up Month at Denver Church of Religious Science. After the service, Schuman and others huddled, one on one, with a specially trained practitioner in a corner of the historic Emerson building at 1420 Ogden St. The voluntary tuneup includes several minutes of prayer, encouragement and meditation ("Breathe in peace, breathe out worry . . . "). For Schuman, the worry is about the troublesome sale of her mobile home and her terrible back pain. Practitioner Jo Ann Zvares began gently: "OK, Faye," she said, "let me know what's on your mind. . . . "

Mind is key to Religious Science, founded a century ago by Ernest Holmes. He taught that people can tap into the "Universal Mind" to harness divine power.

"Each of you, deep down, is the expression of divine force," Pastor Jim Chandler told the flock of 80 gathered in the comfortable meeting room with cushy chairs.

Chandler's message mirrors the essay he contributed to a self-help anthology, Wake Up . . . Live The Life You Love, which includes pieces by Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra. After careers in retail and exotic car sales, Chandler set his sights 10 years ago on starting an urban version of the huge Mile Hi Church of Religious Science in Lakewood. It's still considered the parent church, but it has a very different profile.

"They are a suburban, conservative, white-type congregation," Chandler says. "Many people here are uncomfortable with that. We have a Capitol Hill-kind of diversity," he said, including the gay community and an eclectic mix that ranges from lawyers and educators to local neighbors.

The service careens from silent meditation to the buoyant folk-guitar of one-time opera singer Christy Wessler, who got the crowd clappin' and rockin' with the song, "Don't you know you're on the road again, on the road of life?''

Michael Cowdin, 54, likes it here because "there are no rules." On the other hand, you could say Mary Jo Honiotes, 49, was inspired to follow Religious Science and become a staff member precisely because of its rules, encompassed in the message: "If you can change your thinking about your life, you can change your life."

As for Schuman, in 1963 she left Wisconsin to follow a promising romance to Florida. When that failed, she looked for another adventure and picked Colorado.

Schuman left Sunday saying the tuneup worked: "It helps me to be in the right frame of mind," she said.

torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055