Worship Sundays at 9 am
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Walking Together with Our Homeless Neighbors
Do you want to be part of a new effort through Good Sam to reach out and better care for our neighbors? So far, we have made a good start with “Our Daily Bread” Food Pantry and through the WARM program. Here is a new and engaging opportunity called the Next Steps Fellowship! More information and an introduction to Next Steps Fellowship can be found here (from October 2013).
We invite you to the monthly fellowship meetings at 6:30 pm — the next two meetings will be on Thursday, November 14 and Thursday, December 12 at Cornerstone Presbyterian Church (23101 Town Creek Drive, Lexington Park, MD 20653).
Our mission is to develop relationships between members of faith communities and the homeless community, with transformation, growth, and life change happening on both sides. In order to accomplish this, we are creating a regular fellowship of folks who want to be about this process.
The primary values of the Next Steps Fellowship are:
- Being in fellowship with others who are actively seeking to care for neighbors who are hurting
- Encouraging one another in our own efforts to make a difference in the lives of others
- Inviting the whole Christian community to step up to learn and practice effective patterns of building community among ourselves and those who are hurting around us
- Not duplicating or reinventing services that already exist in our community for our homeless neighbors, but to refer and encourage follow-through with the service providers
- Welcoming our homeless neighbors into supportive community connections (mentoring and small group support and broader faith communities) where encouragement and accountability can flourish
- Working in concert with our community partners, service providers, faith communities, pastors and other interested lay persons to develop a competent community that caringly goes about supporting our homeless neighbors in their own efforts toward becoming self-sufficient, housed, employed and contributing members of our community
- Striving to see our homeless neighbors as gifts to our community so they come to recognize their value as well
- Through relationship with God, in fellowship with one another and in relationship with our hurting neighbors, to move with them through the stages of assistance beginning with relief but moving to rehabilitation and then to development of new relationships, life skills and learning to contribute to the community as well as one’s own betterment
If you enjoy learning about relationships, meeting new people, caring for people who are struggling, and/or connecting people to community resources that can really help them—this fellowship may just be for you. We will encourage each other and learn effective ways to make a difference.