What is your church doing?

[jimmiej]

The other day, someone posted on the "Islam" thread that "Nothing good ever came from organized religion." Now, while bad things have been done in the name of religion, churches do good things all the time. It made me curious as to what other churches do in their service to God to benefit the lives of people. I'm approaching this from a Christian perspective, but I realize we're not all Christians. If you're willing and interested, tell us what you're church/synagogue/mosque/religious organization is doing.

Our church does many things, but a few things we're currently doing are on more of a grand scale. We just bought the buildings of a recently closed down charter school. We refurbished the buildings and have started an after-school program for at-risk/underpriveleged elementary age kids. The volunteers help the kids with their homework, feed them, mentor them, and monitor the needs of their families. These services are offered at no cost to the families. Many of the volunteers have experience in education. These families all accepted an invitation to participate and the local school district agreed to help provide names of possible families in need. We just started this, so time will tell how the Lord uses it to bless people.

For the last several years, we've held an event at Christmas called "Heart of Hope." Underpriveleged families are invited to a Christmas dinner where they are fed, given winter coats as needed, a bag of groceries, and toys for the children. It's been wildly successful. The best part is seeing people willingly use their spiritual gifts in God's service.

We also have divorce recovery classes, alchohol and drug abuse recovery classes, and a very busy counseling center.

Anyone else want to share?

 

[Holly]

I'm not a Christian, but I help with fundraising at a local Episcopal Church that raises money for orphans in Africa.

I also help out with a holiday fair that my local Catholic Church puts on for their community outreach programs.

 

[CEDmom]

We moved in June and recently joined the local Episcopal Church. Just recently a group went to Guatamala to help with a building project in a village there. It's something they do about once a year. The church also sponsors an annual bike ride to raise money for a local soup kitchen and outreach program.

 

[Aidensmom]

We provide facilities for AA, Alanon, and other similar support groups, and we are the main supporter of a crisis pregnancy center in our area. We run a daycare center and also have some children's dance classes. We have special collections for various local charities. We also do a lot of things for the community, like our annual fall festival, without making it into a "church" event by doing any type of evangelizing.

 

[jimmiej]

Speaking of other countries, our pastor has a real passion for Haiti. We send people there on a regular basis, although we cancelled the last trip due to the political unrest.

 

[Allison]

I'm another person who attends an Episcopalian church -we provide meeting facilities for several groups-everything from Girl Scouts to AA. We are a very small church so there isn't a lot of money but we have helped out with lots of volunteer activities in town.

 

[Aimeedyan]

We have a food bank, clothing room, hand out sack lunches, have a coffee and donuts breakfast once a week, and offer a formal dinner each week for the homeless and needy in our area. Our church is located where most of the city's homeless live and there are many shelters in walking distance to the church. We also have an afterschool program for at risk children that meets year round, tutoring, and sports for them. Homeless are welcomed into our building, use our facilities, and many of them join and/or attend church on a regular basis there. We also hire some when we can find something they can do. We are the only family some of them have; we let them use the church address for mail purposes, drive them to the hospital, help them move if they find a place, and act as their advocate. There are several ministers on staff that try to coordinate that and many of our church members do this for them.

We also have an international ministry that focuses on the Korean population - we teach them how to speak English, American culture, sewing, crafts, and other things. It also gives them a way to fellowship. We provide child care for their preschoolers.

We host several support groups, such as parkinsons support and MOMS, and they meet throughout the week. We also host a GED course that is partnered through the city. And we have a partnership with a local elementary school and we host and run a Christmas store for the students each year; church members give money and new gifts all year long and then church members man the store, help the child wrap the gift, etc for Christmas. The local school is comprised of the very very poor families in our city.

We also have a parents day out program, but I don't really consider that a missions ministry as we do not offer low-cost assistance for it at this point.

We also have partnerships with a Navajo reservation, 2 churches in NOLA, and an orphanage in Russia; we send large groups each year to those locations. We also have partnerships with several churches in our area (none the same denomination as our own) and do group mission work.

There are many more, I am still learning all of them! Our church is VERY community ministry minded; more so than any church I've ever seen. When I was interviewing with them, it made them really stand out - how dedicated they are to the area in which the church is located. We aren't perfect, of course, but we do a great job in this area.

 

[GeorgeG]

I don't belong to any church or organized religion, but I am a paid member of a church band. This church has all sorts of programs for helping members and the community in general. They also coordinate with six other churches of different denominations in a program called "I.N.C." to share resources for the community.

 

[goofygirl]

My Episcopal church is affliated with a food bank, clothing collection, and lends the parish hall to A.A., a dog club, and an Indian youth club. It's also involved with Girls Friendly- an organization for young girls affliated with the Episcopal Church.

Parishoners also do many things on their own like volunteering, Habitat for Humanity, helping the Humane Society, and doing walkathons for various causes.

 

[froglady]

Our church supports two overseas missions (year round), a half-way house for recovering alchoholics, shorter term missions to Haiti and Jamaica, summer activities for urban youth, mentoring for an urban school, outreach programs for the community (weekly concerts and a luncheon; the majority of attendees are elderly people from nearby homes) and we provide volunteers for the homeless shelter, downtown food bank, and the Giving tree at Christmas. We also raise money and donate it to local church homes for the elderly, along with organizations that run subsidized/free daycare, and after school programs. Our church sponors a Meals On Wheels program, and is heavily involved in both Habitat for Humanity and two different urban youth programs.

Our church started a school decades ago, but it is more or less self-sufficient now. There are smaller ministries, such as visiting and ministering
to shut-ins, etc, but they are directed more at church members/friends than the community at large.

 

[JoyG]

Three that I thought of off the top of my head:

Our church sent a team of members to Biloxi Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina to help clean debris and repair homes for people.

We've collected clothes, food, and school supplies for children on the nearby reservations.

We send out missionaries to places like Dominican Republic to help build schools and churches.

 

[Saxsoon]

Our church annually goes to Bosnia to help out.

Our youth group goes out every week or two to help out in the community.
The youth went to Guatamala this past year.

And we went to a children's home in Mexico last year to tar the roof, and a dump to give out beans and rice. We walked into a little hut that served as their church, and they were so happy to see us. Everyone was laughing and crying, it was just so powerful. It still brings me to tears, and I am not the sensitive type.

 

[Cool-Beans]

I always kind of tune out when they talk about it, which may not reflect well on me, I guess. I worked for the church and know that Catholic Charities does tons of really good stuff and I'm glad...I just don't need to know what all it is.

I give them my money, do my church-approved job, and show up every week with whatever I'm supposed to bring...this week it is towels for battered women, last week it was combs for men who are getting out of jail. I'm the only one so far who sees the humor in the two weeks being consecutive. (Don't joke with the very pious about church donations!)

I think my church is the only one that requires (well, asks) us to show up with something very particular (and usually stupid...I'll never forget "socks for Mexicans" week) every Sunday. But I figure there is a method to the madness and show up with my little piece of assistance every Saturday or Sunday.

 

[minkydog]

My favorite mission activity is the Christmas Shoebox ministry, where we fill a shoebox full of toys and school supplies for kids of a specific age & gender and they get shipped off to parts of the U.S. and the world. The first year my church did it, we got a fair response. That is, until the girl's mission group volunteered to cover and fill the shoeboxes. They asked church members to donate the shoebox and then send in items to go in them. All of a sudden, we had more stuff than they knew what to do with! It seems that some people were having a hard time with covering the shoe box with wrapping paper, so they would decline to participate Now, the young girls make a party of it and when they're done, adults take them to the make collection point for distribution.

We also do a large Country Fall Festival on oct 31. A lot of families don't participate in Halloween and this gives them an alternative. There are games, crafts, hay ride, cake walk, ponies, a petting zoo, pizza, cotton candy and popcorn. We don't do jack-o-lanterns or ghouls, but the kids can dress up if they like and they get candy at every game. If people want to find out more about our church, there is someone they can ask. There is no open evangelizing, though, so everyone feels comfortable. We have a lot of international families who would not feel safe trick-or-treating in the neighborhood, but they can come to my church and we're having a big party.

 

[barkley]

the parent church (seventh day adventist) of our local church is very active in medical (loma linda hospital is a huge example) and educational research and outreach. they encourage their teens and college students to go on missionary trips which usualy involve either helping in medical settings or working to build/supply schools. they also HEAVILY support their schools (which attract allot of non sda's)-there's one school on one of the hawaiian islands that only has one child in attendance, the church continues to fund it because they belive any person who wants to be educated in a christian school should have the opportunity (so they pay for the school, the teacher and all the associated costs to give the one student interested the opportunity).

our local church's 'pet project' is to collect clothing and personal care items for 'release packages' for discharged inmates from area prisons. they try to supply an outfit for them to wear upon release, something to sleep in, something appropriate for a job interview and toothbrushes/paste, hair care/shaving supplies, deoderant and the like.

 

[christineann]

I am Episcopalian, and some of the things our church does are:

started the first soup kitchen in Charleston (in our parish hall), which has now evolved into Interfaith Crisis Ministries

started Hospice of Charleston

volunteering at Interfaith Crisis Ministries and food collection every Sunday

Tea room cafe every spring, with 100% going to outreach programs in the community

providing school supplies and uniforms to children who cannot afford them
(HALO)

providing Christmas gifts to the children of those in prison

programs for college students in the area

mission trips to South America, Mexico

involved in Habitat for Humanity

rebuilding homes in New Orleans

entertaining in the nursing/retirement homes in the area

Blessing of the Animals every October for the feast of St. Francis, with all offerings going to the local humane society

also, the Seafarer's Ministry, which provides toiletries, snacks, magazines, paperbook books, etc. to the men on container ships at the port of Charleston

many more - just can't remember all of them right now

 

[jimmiej]

Just curious. Has anybody's church sponsored a new-church start? I don't know if other Christian denominations do this. I'm Southern Baptist. Our church began in 1982 as a mission church off another local Baptist Church. We helped start about a half dozen new churches in the last 5 years. Most are in our local area, but one was in Oregon. Almost all are self-sufficient now.

 

[dzorn]

We belong to a small Lutheran church. Every christmas we have 20+families we supply christmas gifts through Lutheran Child and Family Services. We usually collect canned goods for different local food banks. This year we also collected school supplies for LCFS. We also have a team that works on houses for Haitat for Humanity.

Denise in MI

 

[Mugg Mann]

The other day, someone posted on the "Islam" thread that "Nothing good ever came from organized religion." Now, while bad things have been done in the name of religion, churches do good things all the time.

jimmiej-

This life-long athiest wanted to take a second and let you and other posters know that the poster cited on the Islam thread does not speak for all of us.

The vast majority of religious people I know are decent people who go out of their way to help someone in need, and it's heartwarming to see the things that you folks are doing to help others.

 

[christygobar]

There is a local Children's orphanage/halfway house that our church goes to visit monthly, and also makes fun pillowcases for the kids so that they can take something with them when they move to foster care.

They do a TON of work in Mexico - building church buildings, painting apartments, spending time with the people who live around border cities (Texas).

Also, I do web design work for a church out of Tennessee who feeds children and families all over Haiti, and bring in Bible classes for those families. One of the directors of this project is an old co-worker of mine. I've learned a ton about the country and they are doing some great stuff for these kids.

I also have a lot of friends who do missionary work through the Southern Baptists - a couple who lives in Milan starting Bible studies, an old friend who just moved to S. Korea to teach at an international Christian school, friends who do summer missions to play sports with kids and start VBS camps in various countries.

Tons of great stuff