Not Just Another Blog Challenge: #4 - What's so Great about your Place of Worship

Our church is pretty awesome.

I think what I admire most about our church is how much they reach out to the community. I don't think I've ever belonged to a church that was as involved in our local community as this one.

We support a local ministry that provides food to those who are struggling, primarily homeless adult men. Members provide bags of food & toiletries on a weekly basis, that are loaded up once a month & delivered to the ministry.

Once a month the members of the church also go to the ministry's primary location and serve a hot meal, as well as providing music & a quick devotional. Still primarily homeless men, but as the economy took a downturn they started seeing more & more families.

The church is also heavily involved with an organization that provides for men recently released from prison. This group owns two houses that serves as a type of transition house as the men find their footing back in the real world. They are provided a furnished room, and must attend counselling sessions, etc. while there. The organization also helps the obtain basic job skills so they can begin working again.

In addition, our church has a jail ministry, where members of the church go to area jails several times a month to minister to the inmates, pray with them, or sometimes just listen to them. Inmates who have shown good behavior are permitted to attend local worship services, and our church provides transportation for approximately 10 inmates to attend our church every Sunday.

We also support the local pregnancy crisis center, providing counselling to pregnant women who find themselves looking for alternatives to abortion, many of them feeling they have no options, but don't know what else to do. They provide everything from basic baby supplies, parenting classes, adoption counselling, basic prenatal care, and sometimes just listening to the women's struggles.

I'm sure I'm missing some areas of community involvement, but those are definitely the big ones.

There a thousand other great things about our church, but the outreach to the local community is definitely one that has stuck out to me.