Community Missions is dedicated to building partnerships with the faith community. We seek partnerships that create common ground. We strive to work with local faith-based organizations to help them realize the full potential of their ministries, while also increasing awareness of CMI services to build up volunteerism and support our work. CMI also seeks to develop ongoing working faith-based partnerships on the denominational, regional, and national levels.
We know from experience that your involvement with the Mission will have a positive affect not just for those we serve. Your involvement will help increase the health and effectiveness of your ministry as you become part of God’s call to serve those in need.
There are many ways to get directly involved in ministry at the Mission and we have made it easy for you to get started.
Example opportunities include:
The Mission’s Community Kitchen serves lunch Monday through Friday from 11:15 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Your church or ministry group can work with the Kitchen staff to plan, prepare, and serve a meal. It could be done as a one-time event, or you could commit to a regular schedule (once a week/month, biweekly, etc.).
This is often a wonderful activity for small group ministries (be they adult or youth groups). It gives group members the chance to participate in a hands on project that has direct benefits for our neighbors in need. At the same time is is an amazing tool for group leaders as they work to teach that the Gospel is not just words but a continual call to compassionate action in the world.
Along with the hot meals we serve during the week, the Mission operates a Food Pantry. Food is distributed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Friday afternoons, however, there are volunteer opportunities to support the Pantry throughout the week. Your church or small group ministry could help with the advanced preparation and then with the distribution on the giveaway days.
There are also special distribution dates and food delivery dates where there is always a need for lots of extra help unloading trucks and distributing the food items to the larger turnout that happens on those special dates. (If you are interested in finding out about these dates, please reach out to us though our Contact Us page.)
The Gardens of Compassion is a community gardening initiative created through a partnership between Community Missions and St. James United Methodist Church in Niagara Falls.
A food drive could be done in conjunction with serving a meal at the Community Kitchen, working at the Food Pantry, or as a separate project. Non-perishable food items would be collected. There are two especially effective ways to hold the food drive. The first is to designate four consecutive Sundays for the drive. On each Sunday of the food drive, have part of the service focused on how this type of giving exemplifies the call to service in scripture. For the final Sunday of the drive, have all elements of the service be designed to point towards a final dedication and blessing of the collected food items.
Another very effective method is to designate one Sunday a month as a regular collection day. (If food items come in throughout the month, arrange them around the altar as a reminder of the ongoing food drive.) On the chosen regular Sunday include a special prayer of dedication or blessing for the food donated that month. This method has the advantage of making this type of giving a regular part of church life.
The food items can be brought to Community Missions at your convenience. If you have an especially large quantity, the Mission can make arrangements to come and pick up the donated food from the church.
There are many ways that churches and small group ministries can become involved at the Mission. There is always work to be done—cleaning, organizing, painting, carpentry, repairs, landscaping, and more.
Everyone has special talents and skills. For some it is wood working. For others electrical work. Still others excel at organizing cluttered spaces and cleaning those spots most people miss. Some have that amazing green thumb where every plant they even look at seems to grow more beautiful.
In Romans 12:6, St. Paul wrote that we each are given different gifts. By bringing the many different gifts and talents of your church or small group ministry to Community Missions we can provide the opportunities and teachable moments where the Gospel’s call to service can come to life.
Finally, there are opportunities other than the more physical kinds of hands-on work. We sometimes have need for general office help as well: help stuffing envelopes for fundraising mailings, phone calls to update church information and donor lists, data entry for database updates, phone calls to update donor list, and many others.
If you are interested in learning about some of our current needs where your church or small group ministry can get involved in a partnership with Community Missions, please send us an email through our Contact Us page. Or let us know what your talents and gifts are so when the need arises we know who to contact.
As Niagara County’s largest emergency housing shelter with many other programs to support our neighbors, we have a constant need for hygiene products. Holding a drive for hygiene products, and assembling them into kits, can be an engaging effort for your faith community while directly ministering to our guests.
Please call 716-285-3403 ext. 2259 for details.
Each morning when you get up and dressed it probably does not dawn on most of us to be thankful that we have socks and underwear to put on. It is one of those things we take for granted– and we shouldn’t. There are many in our community who would be be more than grateful to have clean undergarments to wear each day– they would count it as a true blessing.
At the Mission we are always in need of undergarments for our clothing closet, emergency housing shelter, youth home and other programs. Being able to provide these most basic items is always a challenge. When we can provide them, it helps those in need in so many ways. It provides those who use our services with more than just comfort, but provides dignity and a feeling that people care enough to remember that there are needs that can’t be seen but are still important.
To meet this need, Community Missions has begun a partnership with an organization called Socks’n Undies Sunday which is dedicated to this very issue that so many individuals and families in need face. You can also be part of this partnership– in fact it will not work without you! Using the shopping list from “Socks’n Undies Sunday” your church or ministry can hold a drive to collect donations of new undergarments that will be distributed through Community Mission. Our goal is to have at least one undergarment donation drive each month from January – September, and two drives in the months of October, November and December.
If you are interested in helping us meeting this basic need please download the posters and shopping list below and contact us so we can help you get started. Our suggestion is that you hold the drive by collecting items and donations throughout the month and on the final Sunday of the month hold a dedication for the donations before delivering them to the Mission. (Please sort the items by gender and size before bringing them to the Mission. Also please fill out the donation sheet to help us in keeping track of what we have on hand.)
Giving is always an act of faith. We give trusting that our gift will make a difference and that God is faithful and multiplies our gifts in ways that we can not expect. At Community Missions we live this truth every day. The financial resources for all of our Crisis Services programs (Community Kitchen, Crisis Housing, Food Pantry, etc.) come from grants and donations by individuals, churches, and local businesses. In order to continue to offer support and provide compassionate services to our neighbors in need, we rely on the compassion of others. It is an exercise in faith to do this.
Churches and ministries can be part of this faithful living by collecting special offerings for Community Missions. Some churches take the partnership a step further and commit to donating their entire offering from a specific Sunday to the Mission. We see these acts of compassionate giving as a display of faith. We are always humbled at the generosity and caring people of faith have demonstrated.
The end of the year holiday season provide several opportunities for your faith community to get involved.
Our Holiday Help program pairs local families in need of help during this season with sponsors willing to do so. We screen and interview each family and provide sponsors with a wishlist for the family and each child. We then ask sponsors to bring in their wrapped gifts that we distribute to the family. Your group can take part as a sponsor, or volunteer to help manage this program.
We also welcome donation drives of holiday food or presents during this time, and also ask for Giving Tree sites for our Tidings of Joy program to support our Youth Services.
