Central in the Community
In the middle of May, Central’s Vision Team sat down to discuss what the congregation needed to do next to continue pursuing the vision it feels God is calling it to. While all of the work we have done thus far has been transformational, the team decided that it was time to look outward.
So much of our focus for the past year or so has been on our congregational transformation because we needed to better understand where we’ve been, where we are, and where our new vision is taking us. To do this, we had a year-long theme of “Imagine,” we created our Rightsizing Workgroup, and we ditched the old way of having business meetings and began our new Central Conversations.
But the Vision Team decided it was time to do something that took our focus out of the congregation into the broader community. “Central in the Community” was the result: a three-month theme with three different community focuses.
In June, we looked at issues of housing in our community and raised money for our housing partner, ACTS. From a special offering, the Dessert Auction, and a donation from CCHASM, we raised over $8,000 to fund this partnership.
In July, we focused on food. While we continued our collections for our Broken Loaves Food Pantry, we also examined how food can bring us together. Seeing how weeknight meals for families with children can be difficult, we hosted a community dinner to give parents a night off from cooking and give them a safe space to relax and let their children have fun.
Finally, in August, we focused on education by collecting supplies, offering teacher support, and being present for back-to-school activities.
Supplies - We hosted our annual donation drive for Providence Elementary and collected an entire SUV full of supplies for children. We also gifted the children in our Central community with their favorite writing utensil, and then blessed the supplies and prayed for the students during Sunday worship.
Teacher support - We provided donuts for the teachers at Monacan High School (180 donuts total) and Providence Elementary School (144 donuts total) as a way of letting them know we are thinking about them and supporting them as the school year begins. We also provided bagels to our Ruby Cashion Preschool and a handwritten card to each teacher.
Presence - At Ruby Cashion Preschool’s meet the teacher night, we greeted families at the door, offered drinks and snacks to parents and kids, and set up a table with information about Central’s various ministries. In addition, we had a table with snacks and information about Central’s ministries at Providence Elementary’s open house.
For the past three months, the congregation has truly shown up to serve as “Central in the Community” and my guess is that we not only serve others in our community, but we discovered something about ourselves and our calling as a church as well. Thanks to everyone who supported this initiative. Although the official theme has ended, the work of being a church for the community is just beginning!