Mercy Ministry Team
The Mercy Ministry Team is a group of Church members who are elected at the annual church meeting to oversee the requests for financial and other assistance that we receive from church members and non-members. We also work with other churches and community agencies to meet larger needs in our community. We train volunteers to serve in the ministry and to serve on our team. We have been using materials from the Chalmers Center, a group of people who have spent their lives studying causes of poverty and ways to eliminate it.
Our Vision
“Bring glory to God by displaying the love of Jesus Christ to others during their time of need”.
We believe that poverty is caused by broken relationships between people and God, people and themselves, people and others (spouse, child, family, neighbors, etc.} and people and God’s creation. We often get an initial request for some kind of help but there is always more to it than that. We want to come along side of people and work to help them improve these relationships and smooth out their lives.
Our Mission
“Meeting social and physical needs of others in our church and local community.”
Since the early days of the church people have shared resources to help each other out. Our community groups are our first place our members can go to for help. They work very well at meeting each other’s needs. But if the need is too great for the community group to handle they can come to us to ask for help. We have helped with home repairs, car repairs, bills, food etc. There is no line item in the church budget for these things. Church members donate money to the benevolence fund after each communion service. We have to be good stewards of these funds.
Our Strategies
We meet monthly to discuss church and community needs and projects. Generally, requests are formally documented and verified. We prioritize providing help to church members or community group members. After those we consider requests from regular attenders and finally people with no connection to the church. Smaller requests are handled by email and decided on quickly. Larger requests are discussed in our meetings. Non-member requests are routed through a local organization, Love in the name of Christ “LoveINC”. They work with non-profit organizations across the city to channel requests to the appropriate agency or screen requests to make sure they are valid. We have a food pantry for our members. There are two shelving units in the Pointe with dry and can goods that are available on Sundays. We also work with other churches or agencies to meet larger needs across our community. We’ve done food drives which provided boxes of food to our East Jackson neighbors, sock drive for school children, school supplies for back packs for kids etc. These are separate gifts from our members on a project by project basis.
How can you help?
We can always use volunteers. You can ask to become a part of the Mercy Ministry Team. This involves training in the Chalmers Center materials and an interview with a member of the Team. If you are handy around the house we need help with small projects around a home. We are starting to get some of these requests and are talking about a program. You can volunteer to help on one of our drives for clothing, food, school supplies etc. Just ask a team member.