Mayflower Congregational Church
Monday, September 06, 2010

Outreach

Outreach is a primary reason why the Church exists. Reaching out and sharing what we have with others as Jesus instructed requires us to act out our faith in word and deed. Each year Mayflower is trying to increase its outreach giving by 1% and currently 10% of our total income from giving goes to outreach.

Mayflower assists Christian ministries with both funding and hands-on service: 

  • Habitat For Humanity - Mayflower Church and Universal Forest Products Inc. are jointly working with Habitat for Humanity of Kent County to build a home for the Karla Parker family at 1947 Jefferson SE.  Click here for photo updates.
  • Interfaith Hospitality Network - A group of homeless families selected by The Salvation Army are housed at Mayflower Church for a week, four times a year. Mayflower members host, cook, play and serve with the families.
  • Dégagé Ministries -  On the first Monday each month members prepare and serve meals for the homeless and underemployed, mingling with the clientele of Dégagé on Division Street.
  • ACCESS (All County Churches Emergency Support System) - For the annual food drive in October, Mayflower joins with Trinity Lutheran Church to advertise the event, then collect and sort the food, providing several tons of foodstuff for the pantries around the county.
  • Kids Food Basket - children of Mayflower bring selected food items to church and then visit the Food Basket to prepare 1300 or more sack suppers which are distributed at community schools.
  • Mission Workcamp - Each year Mayflower youth travel to another community to give a full week of service, fixing, painting, cleaning and building ramps for the elderly and handicapped.  

The World Ministry of Mayflower Church focuses on Eden Children's Village in Doma, Zimbabwe. Members and groups of the church sponsor 75 children in the village, almost all of whom are HIV positive. The local rate of HIV infection is 85% in that part of  Zimbabwe. In addition, Christian Outreach funds ongoing projects and operation of the village and is working towards the funding of the library building for their new school currently in the planning process. Mayflower provided a brickmaking machine several years ago, our first project of the village and it has been used to build numerous buildings for the staff, children and various programs.

In addition special offerings are received at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to share funds with the YWCA Domestic Crisis Center and St. John's Home.

For more information about any of these programs, contact the Mayflower office at (616) 459-6255.