An Advent Update
Hello friends of the East Dayton Fellowship! The image above is of a mural painted for our church on a large stretch of plywood by a local graffiti artist. Etch (as this artist is known) has depicted the holy family as East End homeless people in the midst of a tent encampment. In so doing, he has visually distilled some profound truths. Jesus entered the world at the margins, among poor and overlooked people; he had no place but a manger to lay his infant head. Moreover, Jesus remains in this world among the poor and homeless. He told us, in fact, that whenever we serve the needy, we are really serving him! To see him in and as a homeless east ender is to see clearly. Thanks to Etch for donating this large piece for us to hang on the front of our building in this season!
A Multitude of Praises
I am tempted to write a small book, telling the story of the past 3 months in detail... but I will spare you that! Instead, let me offer a brief list of highlights with some accompanying pictures.
1) Following multiple generous donations of effort and money, we have made serious headway on transforming our garage into a proper, dedicated pantry building.
2) Multiple generous ongoing donations have been pledged toward the community development work Chi has been hired to head up. A team of city workers were here just last Friday to aid us thanks to connections she has made and an initial meeting with the county treasurer about nearby abandoned properties showed promise.
3) We hosted a love feast and community bonfire which attracted people from multiple churches as well as neighbors we had never met before - it was a lovely time together!
4) We distributed over 75 turkeys, 93 pantry packs, and hundred of meals the week before Thanksgiving. In fact, that week was so full of opportunities to serve our community that we took extended time in our service to praise God for the privilege we had in performing these works of mercy. You can see that lengthy bit of testimony HERE. (The whole thing is about 17 minutes long and includes some numbers and some stories.)
5) We served a sit-down Thanksgiving meal to the community on the Friday following Turkey-Day itself.
6) We served a Sunday brunch following our service to families with children in our neighborhood. Every kid got a large stuffed animal, a gift bag, a chance to meet Santa, and a great meal. The multi-lingual crowd of families had a blast, as did our volunteer team who ended up dealing with the usual surprises (including some homeless friends who dropped by, a friend in the midst of a bad addiction relapse, and sundry other bits of chaos that day).
7) We welcomed 6 people into official church membership and hosted our second-ever combined church council, approving a yearly budget, admitting new leaders, and celebrating all God has done in our midst this past year. See HERE for the year-end general report.
8) Dami, our new Coordinator of Spiritual Formation, has us engaging weekly in the disciplines of scripture meditation and memorization. We are distributing gifts to multiple needy families ahead of Christmas. We're giving out prodigious numbers of coats in this cold weather, and we already have more inquiries about membership and baptism. This is quite a season we are having!
Prayer Requests
This season, as joyful as it has been, has come with significant costs as well. We have been very busy... perhaps too busy at moments given how small in number we are. Pray that we will move at a pace God knows is best and for our ability and willingness to enter regularly into the sabbath rest which God commands us as individuals and as a community to observe. Pray, too, that God will send more workers into these harvest fields to work alongside us!
With so much happening at the building, coordination among ourselves and with our partners can be a challenge. Pray for us that, as we grow, we will communicate and cooperate well.
Pray also for our spiritual and physical safety. A threatening note which invoked the name of Lucifer was left for the church in our mailbox a few weeks ago. Around the same time, two other people invoked Satan in conversations with me, one of them in a directly threatening way. During the Thanksgiving meal we provided, a mentally unwell man made very disturbing threats against Pastor Susan. Shortly thereafter he attacked one of our young volunteers, bloodying his face. Thank God, he did not cause lasting injury! But it was a very frightening situation. (This was the first time there has been violence on the church property. We pray it is the last!)
Pray too for provision for our expanding work. We are trying to cover Chi's salary for the new year (and have made amazing progress thanks to generous donors, but we're not quite done yet). We're also trying to build up funds for the community development work itself which Chi is leading. In 2024 we are more than doubling our benevolence budget item in the face of the needs we keep seeing and, honestly, we'd love to expand it further.
We did not get a grant we were hoping to secure to upgrade our kitchen and bathrooms, but those upgrades are still needed. We will apply again in a reorganized fashion and remain hopeful about getting some help from this source. We have already received some help from the MCC toward these needs - thank God!
In Conclusion
What a year it has been! Your prayers and your giving, our far-flung friends, has made much of this possible! As ever, we continue to need your support as we serve people here in the name of Jesus Christ.
You can find our website HERE.
You can give securely HERE.
May the Prince of Peace reign in your hearts this season as you wait, with all his people everywhere, for his coming again.
