Community Service
Community service in churches has classically been referred to as “mission” work; at our church, this is straight-up volunteering — in our own community and in larger regional or national efforts. Locally, we started and helped to grow a summer lunch program for kids, organized food drives for the local food shelf, and helped build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Nationally, we have collected items for emergency kits, collected money for the Heifer Project and other charitable organizations, and gone on “mission trips” to communities recovering from disaster to lend a helping hand.
Waterbury Good Neighbor Fund
The Waterbury Good Neighbor Fund (WGNF) is a no-strings-attached financial aid fund for local people in need organized by Community Action Service Team, a nonprofit organization focused on helping people in Waterbury and the surrounding area. The WGNF has been managed for the last twenty years by the pastor of Waterbury Congregational Church, Peter Plagge, and was an instrumental part of Waterbury’s recovery after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011.
Laundry Love
On Mother’s Day, 2017, we read an excerpt from the Gospel of Mary:
When the Blessed One had said these things, he greeted them all, saying . . . “Beware that no one lead you astray saying, ‘Look over here!’ or ‘Look over there!’ For the Child of Humanity is within you! Follow it!”
Gospel of Mary, Chapter 4
We talked about the basic human need to be connected to this inner child, and the difficulty of doing that when others see only a drug addict, or a homeless person. One small way of helping others might also clear the way to being seen as a human — to do their laundry.
And thus was born our rendition of Laundry Love. Once a month, on the second Wednesday of the month, from 5 pm – 7pm, volunteers load quarters into the laundry machines at the Waterbury Laundromat so that some among us may have clean clothes, when otherwise they would not, for lack of resources.