News

We need you!

Have you ever thought, “I’d love to serve but I’ll wait until God gives me a sign?” Great news: Here it is!

Y’all already know we believe that (1) everyone has something to give, (2) everyone has something to learn, and (3) the world literally needs you to be who you are. So, maybe God is whispering JUMP IN! Check out some of these ways we need help around the church or in serving the community. Maybe one of them is just right for you:

 

  • Helping out in worship
    • Reading or praying in the Sunday morning service (10am)
    • Reading or sharing our blessing at the Sunday evening service (5:30pm)
    • Setting up for food and tables for the Sunday evening service (4 hr/month)
    • Singing in the choir
    • Serving as an usher or greeter
    • Helping to plan special services (arts, music, visuals, creative experiences)
  • Helping out around the church
    • Assisting in the office (1hr/ wk)
    • Cleaning up/organizing around the church (1-3 hrs/wk)
    • Opening the doors or locking up (1hr/wk)
    • Answering the phones when staff is out (as needed)
    • Assist with making quilts or afghans for grieving, ill or hurting community members (2hr/wk)
    • Volunteering in the nursery (2 hr/month, background screen required)
    • Hosting outside groups on site, welcoming, locking up, assisting as needed (varies)
    • Serving on a ministry team (like connecting with special events in downtown Sanford or planning parties)
    • Planting flowers or edible landscaping around campus (as needed)
  • Helping to serve the community
    •  Weekly Aldi grocery pickup and sorting in partnership with the Picnic Project (Wednesday, Friday 2 hr/wk)
    • Helping to host Grace & Grits on our campus (answering ?s, showing folks around, cleaning, 3hr/wk, 4-7pm)
    • Helping with admin related to Grace and Grits (as needed)
    • Drivers to provide rides for homebound or elderly folks (as needed, background check required)
    • Drivers to pick up bread donations from local grocery stores (1-2 hr/wk)
    • Creating and leading new ministries that invest in our community like tutoring, job skill training
    • Bring coffee or breakfast to one of our local day labor sites weekly (varies)
    • Leading a support or recovery group through established models on campus (4 hr/month)
    • Starting a small group for particular interests, age groups, hobbies, studies (4 hr/month)
    • Serving in the kitchen or the toiletries closet at Picnic Project or Grace & Grits (1 hr/wk)
    • Start at Fresh Expression (meeting new people in new places in new ways! https://www.freshexpressionsfl.org/)
Or maybe there’s something else you just know in your guts that you’re being called to do?

 

Message us on Facebook, call the office (407.322.4371), email us at info@fumcsanford.org or send a carrier pigeon if you’re ready to jump in!

Making Friends, Building Bridges

We’ve had an incredible opportunity to begin building friendships with folks from the Husseini Islamic Center in Sanford and we’re so grateful! Early on in the Fall of 2017, right before Hurricane Irma, some folks from the Outreach Team at HIC met with us over a cup of coffee and dreamed about how we might work together. We learned that Minaz, their outreach director, had her own medical transport company. She not only offered to connect us to local resources if we needed them, but she also offered the assistance of her community and her own family in the event of an emergency. An offer is nice of course…

But the most powerful thing was that the first phone call I received after the storm was over was from Minaz! She wanted to make sure all of our homebound church members were alright, asked if anyone needed transportation assistance, and even sent some folks from HIC to help another Methodist church clean up after the storm.

Since then, we’ve had a chance to eat together, serve together, tour each other’s places of worship, participate in an interfaith panel hosted at the mosque and share in an Interfaith Iftar during their month of Ramadan. At our most recent visit, the topic of discussion was our world’s shared need to embrace humility, conversation and friendship across societal lines.

What Interfaith work isn’t:

  • Minimizing our differences or pretending like they don’t exist
  • A covert operation to convert eachother
  • A suspicious investigation to reinforce our biases
  • A one-time event for the #gram of it
  • Superficial conversation

What Interfaith work is:

  • A recognition that in the presence of our differences, we share a common humanity
  • A chance to humbly learn and build friendships
  • An opportunity to understand your own faith better
  • An interruption of the single-story narratives told about folks*
  • A *great* chance to try new foods (!)

In our world, there is much to be lamented, and much to be changed. Some days, the world looks insurmountably divided and hurtful… and then relationships like this happen, and bring hope and joy and learning.

Thanks, HIC, for being such good friends to us and for seeking to make this world a less divided place!   

*Never heard about the danger of a single story? Check out this TED Talk.