New Year… New Approaches(?) -Part I

What if food banks and community fridges and a lot of our well-meaning efforts are actually making people dependent on short-term solutions, focusing only on symptoms while dismissing long-term answers and/or underlying problems? What is a church to do?

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Ontario Church Cooks Up Ways to Help Refugees

Over the past 7 years, the Refugee Committee of Meadowlands Fellowship CRC has helped eight (8) families move from places of desperation into a place of peace and hope for their futures. In order to support another refugee family, the committee recently held a unique fundraiser; an online Arabic cooking class!

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Helping that HELPS During Christmas (and beyond!)

We all like to be helpful, don’t we? Opening a door for the elderly man walking with a cane, making a meal for a neighbour or friend when they are sick or just overwhelmed with life, lending a hand at the school fundraiser, and the list goes on. These kinds of ‘helps’ are wonderful and meaningful and are a wonderful way to bless another person. 
So as we enter into the Christmas season, many of us are looking for even more ways we can help those who are less fortunate than us. But what if I told you that some helping doesn’t really help?

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Ongoing Care and Connection Despite Covid Helps London Ministry Thrive

Sanctuary London has always at its core been about creating relationships with people experiencing oppression and exclusion. Overnight Covid changed the way Sanctuary interacted with each other. In many ways, they went from being intentionally and intensely relational to a service-driven, needs-based ministry. Despite the many challenges, Covid has affirmed their mission and they have continued on!

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Community Garden puts People before Plants

When asked where the idea for a community garden came from, Pastor Marcel deRegt noted that the idea came to him as he was looking out over some of the church property, wondering how that “resource” could be better utilized to serve their broader community. He also shared about Gateway’s desire to be so involved and impactful in the community, that if they were to close their doors, the broader community would not just notice the vacant building, but would be grieved at the loss. He wondered if the community gardens could be another way the church could invest in and work with their local community.

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BC Youth Centre Provides a Safe Harbour with Help of NewGround Partnership

Mission Youth House, also known as MY House, in Mission, BC, is a collaborative initiative to provide a place for youth to eat, shower, do laundry, access medical care and other services and receive help from caring adults. Mission Hills Community CRC has been a key partner in providing counseling to staff, prayer support, financial donations and volunteer support. In order to grow the ministry and move more into the spiritual transformational work within the ministry, they knew they needed some help.
Enter NewGround…

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NewGround Partnership “Pays Off” for Brampton Church

The CAP Debt Centre has allowed the deacons and members of Crosspoint to cultivate relationships and care for people in Christ-centered and tangible ways, and to celebrate successes as they work together with clients in holistic ways.

Word continues to spread as residents and city organizations continue to contact them for help – help they would have been unable to provide without a NewGround partnership.

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NewGround Partnership Helps Church Love Refugees

“The refugee crisis desperately needs churches to show up in ways that further hope, healing, and reconciliation in the world,” Danielle Steenwyk-Rowaan, Open Homes Hamilton’s team leader, shared.

With the help of a NewGround grant, New Hope Church in Hamilton, ON showed up to partner with Open Homes Hamilton. This new partnership has allowed New Hope to welcome refugee claimants into communities of belonging and has reminded them of the transformative power of the ancient Christian practice of hospitality.

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