What community service programs are available through your church?

I attend a Seventh-day Adventist church in my City. The city is one of the largest urban cities in America. The need to offer Community Service is great.

Our Church has an open food pantry ministry. Their are several throughout the city. We serve over 100 people weekly and we also host a special Christmas dinner for residents every year. This is a very large event. The church also gives out toys, clothes, and Fruit baskets during the holidays.

What are ways your church is actively involve in meeting some of the needs in your community.

Open to new ideas and approaches to reaching the community with the message of Christ love.

What community service programs are available through your church?myspace bulletins

Obviously, what is needful in one community is not in another.

The Crystal Cathedral in CA has as its mission statement, "Find a need and fill it; find a hurt and heal it"

Perhaps you can identify a need among widowed men who didn't learn to cook. A "men's cooking group", might not only teaches the simple basics of using microwave (the easiest for our guys) but also produce a common casserole for them to divide up and take home.

Everyone has some problem to deal with. Whether it be because of disease, economics, age, pain, education or relationships. Take an anonymous survey in your congregation /or/ community asking, "What one problem in your life would you like help with?"

What community service programs are available through your church?private myspace myspace.com

The church I am a member at does have a food pantry and we give out lots of food weekly we also have a clothing closet that is opened on Saturday's and Wednesday's we also go to the local shelters once a month to volunteer and help feed them. this last Friday we had a food give away. The Church bought five hundred dollars worth of food from the food bank and then gave it all away to people in the community. We also have appliances Church members donate when they buy new and we give them away. We also do our best to help people that need emergency help with bills. Sometimes the money doesn't go that far. We also have many outreach programs for people that are addicts to different things. We are in essence trying to show Gods love through our actions. As the song goes (They will know we are Christians by our love)
Food pantry (serving 50 to 75 families monthly) also clothes and books. Note: passing out books and magazines at food bank seems to go over well.

Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies, Girl Scouts

Preschool, daycare

Farmers market (approx 3 months per year)

AA

Grief workshops

Kindermusic Programs

Mothers Day Out

Plus various short term mission projects like:

Angel Tree

Habitat for Humanity

Week long mission trips

Work days at halfway house and local camp for underprivileged

Plus visitation and care for the elderly and shut-in members of the congregation.

We are only a small congregation with about 150 average worship attendance so we don't do as many things as a big church.