~ Introduction ~
The Mission Commission works through hands-on projects, empowered partnerships, and advocacy to engage in God’s work in the world and to open up, grow and transform who we are as people of God. The insight of Father Greg Boyle guides our purpose. “You don’t go to the margins to make a difference. You go to the margins to become different.” With this in mind, the Mission Commission works to create opportunities for ministry that don’t simply make a difference, but engage who we are and what we do to become who God wants us to be, as well as promote the human dignity of all people. To that end, mission and outreach become ways to practice openness to growth and change as we love and serve our neighbors near and far.
~ Aspirations ~
Our emphasis to date has been on hands-on mission, but we are also making strides in empowered partnership and advocacy. Rather than viewing our objective purely in terms of helping those in need, we take a more expansive view in which improving ourselves and our understanding becomes a co-equal objective. Accordingly, we seek to engage in effective empowered partnerships endowing us with a greater sense of empathy, humility and understanding, and better equipping us to recognize our own unwitting complicity in the brokenness of the world and to help ameliorate that brokenness through individual acts and effective advocacy. We sponsor annual mission trips – sometimes domestic, sometimes international – that serve the dual purpose of helping people in the communities we visit and helping those members of our congregation who participate grow in their understanding and perspective. Mission Commission The Way Forward Our ambitions are great. To achieve them, we need to recruit additional people to our commission, and to work in partnership with other commissions. Indeed, “partnership” emerges as a central motif that recurs frequently throughout the remainder of this document.
~ Actions ~
Pantry The success of the Pantry signals a fundamental failure of our society, in that people who work hard may yet not earn enough to support their families without some assistance. Recognizing that these people need more than food, the Pantry provides other essential supplies. We seek to work closely with the Pantry team to support this broader mission. As a supplement to the food supply of the Pantry, we actively participate in the Garden of Hope where fresh vegetables are grown.
Hunger Action Committee We have an active subcommittee working on ways to provoke dialogue towards the goal of alleviating hunger in our community.
Garden of Hope We strive to work with the Town of Yorktown to reopen and cultivate land set aside for our community garden where we donate the produce to clients of our pantry and other organizations.
Mental Health Initiative Another subcommittee is working on assessing need and arranging for specific training to enable our congregation to improve its sensitivity and ability to handle issues being faced by our congregants, their families, and the neighboring communities.
St. Christopher’s Inn We sponsor one member who provides weekly counseling services to the men in recovery.
Membership Our aspirations are boundless, but our resources of money, time and energy are limited. We need to recruit new members. We especially seek people who are passionate about helping us pursue our aspirations to ramp up mission efforts that are local, and which move us in the directions of empowered partnership and advocacy.