Our church strives to be a community that loves our neighbors and does justice through compassion, advocacy, partnership, and service. We define our neighbors as the congregation, community, and world. We seek to walk with them through listening and outreach.
Some opportunities for serving the world through our church include:
- Justice Team - Coordinates volunteer and learning opportunities for the congregation. Past projects have included:
- Splitting wood for Outreach
- Building and installing wheelchair accessible ramps for neighbors in need.
- Advocacy and education opportunities around LGBTQ+ rights, creation care.
- Opportunities to learn about different faiths and engage in inter-faith dialogue.
- Thanksgiving Turkey Drive
- Angel Tree
- Voting Ministry Team - Helps advocate for voter rights and educates voters.
- Creation Care Team - Helps educate, advocate, and raise awareness around climate justice issues. In recent years our Creation Care Team has also taken efforts to "green" our church building and campus, as well as led a successful campaign to install solar panels on our church campus.
- Feed A Kid Team - Coordinates distributing weekly food bags to children in our community who are food insecure.
- Church Beyond The Walls Sunday - On the Sunday after Easter, we intentionally choose to live out the resurrection by engaging in service projects in our community. We've picked up litter, delivered plants and cards to homebound members, written cards for the military or folks we know who are struggling, and planted community gardens.
Additionally, our church shares our treasure with "ministry partners" - typically nonprofits in our community who help us to live out are calling to love our neighbors. In recent years we have supported the following area organizations with our time, talent, and treasure.
- Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Polk County
- Thermal Belt Habitat for Humanity
- Operation Hope
- Outreach
- Steps to Hope
- The Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina
- UCC Disaster Ministries
