Coordinating Team
April 14
10:00am

CLP Class

May 15

9:00am

Committee on Ministry

May 25

12:00pm

Since 2006 - One Million ½ lbs of Food have been distributed.  They start arriving early in the morning before dawn.  Hundreds of people need food.  Two semi-trailers are waiting for volunteers to arrive and unload boxes of food, arranged by category-needing to be distributed to nearly 400 guests.  Every two weeks this is the drill. 

Supported by local churches, the "Red Cross Mobile Food Pantry" is the largest Mobile Food Pantry in Michigan distributing 15,000 lbs of food every other week.

First Presbyterian Church in Mt. Pleasant is a regular "host" of the Mobile Food Pantry sharing life stories with the "guests".  Volunteers escort them and make the rounds pushing the grocery cart from station to station is the best part.

Jesus said "Peter do you love me? Feed my sheep"

For more information about the Mobile Food Pantry and to see their schedule please visit  http://sage.nowsprouting.com/communitycompassionnetwork/
 
(To see pictures from their latest event, click here.)

The Synod of the Covenant Mission to the USA Program is inviting local congregations to host one of ten church leaders from six Middle East countries for four weeks September 29 to October 27, 2010.  Host congregations are still needed.  The deadline for applications has been extended until April 30.

Why should your church participate in this program? One of the goals of the program is to educate members of your congregation about your mission partner's part of the world and the challenges facing Christians there. Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Israel/Palestine are in the news every day! Wouldn't it be great to put a face to the stories and hear an eye witness account of what is actually happening? Wouldn't you like your congregation to hear about the Christian response to some of the conflicts and events taking place in the Middle East? At this point we have persons representing each of those countries waiting to be assigned to a host congregation.

How much would it cost your congregation? The cost for hosting is shared by the PC(USA), the Synod of the Covenant, and the local congregation. The minimum cost for a small church is only $650. Larger congregations are asked to pay more if they are able. The church must provide meals, transportation, and housing. More information about the program is found in the Frequently Asked Questions.
 
Who are the church leaders who participate in this program? They are men and women, clergy and laity, all members of ecumenical partner denominations of the PC(USA).  They are pastors, teachers, musicians, physicians, and/or church or organization officials and administrators. They are carefully selected by their denomination to participate, based on their English skills, the depth of their faith, their personality, and leadership abilities.
 
What are the benefits to the hosting congregation? In addition to hearing a first-hand version of events taking place in the Middle East, your church members will have the opportunity to offer hospitality and friendship to a "stranger in their midst". Relationships develop, both personal and communal, that transform individuals and the community of faith. Here is what one lay person said,
 
"The most valuable aspect of the experience for me personally was to make myself find time and find a place in my heart for this stranger from a foreign land, a stranger who is now like my sister and who will always be in my heart as an endless source of inspiration."
 
Many American Christians cannot imagine being on the receiving end of mission activity. Church members have an opportunity to experience the blessings that abound in both giving and receiving when their congregation participates in the Mission to the USA Program.

For more information, or to express interest in the program, please contact the program coordinator, Karen Nottelmann musa@synodofthecovenant.org (231-652-1056).

Our Theological Seminaries provide the training and study we need as a denomination for all who sense that God's call calls them to a position of ordination, a position set aside because we know we want specific people in specific places who can and will answer our desire to worship with a preacher whom we know, our wish to be have our Sessions moderated by someone for whom this is a significant position, and our thirst to be guided and led by a theologian in residence, a person for whom the Word lived and the word writ large in Scripture is a constant companion as well as a consistent challenge. In your missional work, remember your financial contribution to our Theological Education Fund and let it be another expression of our total commitment to the connectional network of our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)!  (And on a personal note - are there not many whom we know who have been blessed by some scholarship help from their Seminaries? - Just a reminder. Blessings)