You’ve just moved to a new city and everything is, well, new. All of the restaurants are new to you. The back roads and short cuts are completely foreign to you. Finding a new barber is no small task! If this place is going to become home to you, what are you supposed to do? The easiest thing to do would be to ask someone who knows. If you want to get to know a new place, ask someone who’s been there for a while.
GCC isn’t totally new to mercy ministry, but we are renewing our efforts and stepping up our game. With this renewed vision to be a church that doesn’t exist for ourselves, it means venturing into new places – places that are unfamiliar to us. So where should we start? By asking someone who’s been here for a while.
Greene Alliance is a local mercy ministry in Greene County. When it comes to mercy ministry, they’ve been here for a while so we’ve decided to partner with them to better focus our mercy efforts in our community.
What does Greene Alliance Do?
Greene Alliance has another name. Its full name is Greene Alliance of Church/Community Efforts or GRACE. As a church with Grace in its name, can you see how this might get confusing? So we’re going to stick with Greene Alliance when we talk about service opportunities.
What they do is pretty diverse, but it really boils down to one thing and that is assisting the materially poor in our community. It might mean providing material goods or financial relief to someone in acute need. It could mean teaching someone how to make and manage a budget. It might include connecting someone with chronic needs to churches or other community organizations who can help them through a long-term relationship.
One of the most important things Greene Alliance does is serve as a central hub. By creating a place for multiple churches to come together and cooperate, Greene Alliance helps coordinate our efforts. Trying to do everything Greene Alliance does in-house would cause problems. For one, we might trip over the feet of other churches who are already doing the same thing. Additionally, going alone increases the chance of getting taken advantage of. Organizations like Greene Alliance help us and other churches ensure we’re applying our resources as effectively as possible.
Why Greene Alliance?
1. Greene Alliance increases our awareness. If we want to respond to mercy needs, we have to know about them first. Greene Alliance already has relationships and networks built in our community. By partnering with them, we can be more aware of the present needs.
2. Greene Alliance helps us cooperate with others. How would we know if someone has already called seven churches about the same need? How do we know if another church is already on the case? Well, Greene Alliance knows.
3. Greene Alliance offers sustained opportunities. Because they do so many things, there’s always something to do. If mercy is going to be part of our church culture, we need to be practicing it regularly. Greene Alliance gives us those opportunities.
Every month we identify a household item and collect it in a basket by the Information Table. That collection is intended to stock Greene Alliance with goods for immediate relief when necessary (which is much more often than you might think). That’s where we’re starting, but our hope is that the Lord will continue to foster this relationship and we’ll become more and more aware of the needs in our community. May the Lord make us a church known for our mercy, just as our God is known for his mercy.