Hello, BRN Family! It’s good to be with you today.
On September 20-21, churches throughout the Baptist Resource Network are invited to participate in Serve Erie, an initiative to serve downtown Erie, the poorest zip code in all of the United States! Presently, the BRN is identifying Erie’s most pressing needs in partnership with Harborcreek Community Church, Millcreek Community Church, and Walnut Creek Baptist Church.
Your church can help shine the light of the gospel in several ways, including evangelism, light construction, work with immigrants, mobile grill outreach, school and community beautification and more! The specific list of projects will go live in July.
In the meantime, I urge you and your church to pray for this Gospel-centered display of compassion. It is the opportunity we have been given to both declare and demonstrate the Good News of the Gospel in Erie, but we believe this effort will spill over into other neighborhoods and communities all across our region.
Why do I say that? Because we all know there are many needs that exist in every community.
At the BRN we are focused on meeting needs in three arenas: Education, Food Insecurity/Poverty, and Triage/Trauma. Each of these pathways have several ways that you, your team, and your church can mobilize to compassionately help meet the needs in your community.
For instance, there are a myriad of opportunities tied to the discipline of education, such as supporting local schools and their students, faculty and staff, teaching English to international residents, or offering computer classes for the disenfranchised.
Also, there are families around us who lack consistent access to enough food and other basic essentials. Churches can step up and meet those physical needs as well as their spiritual needs. And when a crisis comes (whether a natural disaster, a crisis pregnancy, or abuse), churches can be on the front lines to help through disaster relief, counseling, chaplaincy, and more.
Please contact our Compassion Ministries Director, Buff McNickle, to learn more.
Also, the BRN has evangelism and compassion ministry grants set aside to help you in each of these endeavors. If God is putting a ministry on your heart, and you need some financial seed money to get it started, please let us know how we can help you. Simply contact the BRN Help Desk at helpdesk@brnunited.org or by calling or texting 717-652-5856.
Please don’t forget to put Serve Erie (September 20-21) on your calendar. Stay tuned at www.servepasj.com for all the latest details. As always, thanks for listening in and God bless you.
