OUTREACH UPDATE
Looking back
Happy New Year's Eve! What a year we've been through together. As I look back, I am full of gratitude for the ways our church has remembered its neighbors throughout the pandemic:
THANK YOU for your generous gifts this Christmas season! You gave nearly $4000 toward the important work of Restoration Immigration Legal Aid (RILA).
Thank you for supporting RILA through other practical acts of service: buying groceries, assembling hygiene bags, delivering items, and more.
Thank you for beautifying our fence for Easter as a gift to our neighborhood.
Thank you for thoughtfully nominating organizations (and introducing us to so many worthy partners) for our weekly COVID gifts.
Thank you for generous Holy Week gifts to Abara Frontiers and our special offering for Beirut relief.
Thank you for supporting L'Arche with masks, birthday cards, even a birthday cake.
Thank you for prayer walking all year long!
Thank you for your passion for racial justice: for the books you've read and discussed, for the challenging issues you've prayed for, for all the ways you've learned, listened, lamented, and hoped together this year.
Thank you for a glorious Global Week of prayer, art, discussion, and worship focused on the needs of the world.
Thank you for upholding our friends in West Asia in prayer throughout a year of crisis.
Thank you for attending a virtual vision trip with Justice Ventures International.
Thank you for supporting the Owen family with your prayers, stories, meals, flowers, luminaries, and more.
Thank you for loving each other and your neighbors in countless unseen ways.
Looking forward
As we look to 2021, I am hopeful! Hopeful that our relationships with our outreach partners will clarify, deepen, and grow. Hopeful for more opportunities to be generous with our time and resources. Hopeful that more people will encounter a life-giving relationship with Jesus through the ministry of this church.
On that note, I am really excited about the way we are doing small groups this season! We'll be using the Discovery Bible Study method. It's simple, approachable, communal, non-formulaic; it allows the bible to speak to us freshly and directly, whether we have been reading it for years or are just beginning. These groups will be safe for people with no prior bible knowledge, so please invite those you think might be curious! There will even be a Tuesday group for families with kids. Read Katie's blog to learn more and sign up!
Finally, these outreach updates will come less frequently while Liz is on sabbatical, but we'll make sure to weave outreach into our weekly pastoral letters in the meantime!
Thank you all and happy 2021!