December 2018 Volume 29, No. 8 nationalchurch.org
the
messenger
The 2018 Christmas Eve Offering at National UMC:
Reaching Out Across Our City By Anita Seline, Serving Pillar Co-Chair ____________________________
Advent & Christmas Worship at National UMC MM: Metropolitan Memorial campus W: Wesley campus
The Voices of Christmas Sunday, December 16: Advent III
MM services at 9:00 and 11:00 AM The Voices of Christmas: Mary W service at 11:00 AM Christmas Pageant presented by Wesley’s Youth
Friday, December 21: Longest Night Service W service at 7:30 PM
Sunday, December 23: Advent IV
MM services at 9:00 and 11:00 AM The Voices of Christmas: Joseph W service at 11:00 AM Advent Through Spirituals: Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door Eve of the Eve Service MM service at 6:30 PM The Christmas Story, Carol Sing, and Candlelight Communion Continued on next page . . .
This year the Christmas Eve offering at National United Methodist Church will be used to provide financial stability to our Campus Kitchen food recovery and meal preparation project – enabling it to maintain and potentially expand its outreach across our city to areas where a large number of our brothers and sisters experience significant food insecurity. Over the years our Campus Kitchen has expanded from acquiring food on an ad hoc basis and providing a once-a-month meal for 50 at a nearby retirement facility to now on a several days-a-week, every week basis recovering from grocery stores, schools, and businesses hundreds of pounds of food that would otherwise be thrown out – and turning it into hundreds of meals that are distributed through feeding programs housed in United Methodist churches in the eastern portion of our city and through the Salvation Army’s Grate Patrol project that provides meals to those living on the streets (and heat grates) of our city. Routinely we are now providing over 4,000 meals each month. The expansion and success of our Campus Kitchen project has been made possible by the hard work of volunteers from our congregation, our surrounding community, and students from universities within our city. At the same time, that same expansion and success has required us to acquire resources that come with financial obligations. We operate out of a commercial grade kitchen housed within our St. Luke’s Mission Center that has equipment that needs to be maintained. We regularly need to purchase supplies and non-perishable food items that are not normally donated. We have hired a full-time professional chef. We have hired a part-time driver who uses a dedicated church van to make the bulk of our food recovery and meal delivery runs. Through the years our Campus Kitchen project has received meaningful financial support from our church. But this has largely been made possible by redirecting funds that were originally budgeted for other purposes. With the expansion of our project that pattern of funding is being strained and it is hoped that an abundant Christmas Eve offering will provide an element of financial stability that will help ensure the continued success of this important ministry – a ministry that reaches out beyond our walls and into parts of our city where there is profound need.