The River Church Community

I wanted to take a minute to update you today about what is happening in Compassion Ministry.  Locally, we are still building the web-eco-system for the homeless service agencies.  Though the process is taking longer than we expected, it is plugging along.  You can actually take a peak at a “rough draft” it on-line at www.homeless-scc.org  I would suggest clicking on “search for services” to get idea what the map will look like. 

Also, we are continuing to add sections to the community garden.  Specifically, we are thinking about adding a strawberry patch and arbor (for shade and rest) as well as some more flowers.  And I am hoping that in the next year we will begin to focus more on mission originating in small groups, rather than staff initiatives.  From my perspective, I hope that staff initiatives, like kindness SJ, are, in the future, ways for newcomers and people that don’t self ID as Christians to serve as well as a place for us to serve together once in a while as a body.  My hope is that staff initiatives are not the culmination of mission at the River but a bridge to deeper and more meaningful engagements. 

Internationally, we have an ICE team in Peru currently.  Pastor David Alvarez is there with them.  If you have the time, take a look at that partnership on our website at http://www.the-river.org/compassion-ministry/who-are-river-partners/  Also, a River team will be going to Honduras later this summer.