OUTREACH

Outreach opportunities to help meet the needs of the world and our community include:  

Rice Bag Project:   The congregation fills bags with coins based on a daily list of our personal abundance as compared with third-world countries.

F.I.S.H. Bag Food Drives:  Twice a year (Thanksgiving & Mother’s Day) the congregation brings in bags filled with groceries to be distributed by “Fellowship in Serving Humanity.”

Mitten Tree for Hooper Bay:  We collect warm outerwear for this native community.

Angel Tree:  The project is designed to fulfill the simple Christmas wishes of needy children in Anchorage.

Chili Cook-Off:  Church members’ chili & cornbread recipes are taste tested and voted on with the tasters’ dollars.  The monies collected are donated to a local charity.

Bean-a-Fit:  Outreach ministry team members cook up crock pots filled with various bean soup recipes for church members to sample.  Packages of bean soup mix are then sold to benefit Bean’s Café.

Parcel Post Party:  Packages identified only by their return address are auctioned off.  The proceeds this year will go to the Russian Far East ministry and Church World Service.

Blanket Sunday:  Near Father’s Day, church members can buy blankets for the United Methodist Church’s disaster relief agency in honor of their fathers.

School Bus Project:  Our Back to School project distributes requests for school clothing & supplies.  These requests are made by agencies serving needy families:  Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Clare House, and Head Start.  We also have a Baked Potato feed to raise money for requests that are not filled by the church members directly.

Clare House:  St. John members provide a regular evening meal for a designated night each month at Clare House, a shelter for abused women & their children.

Blood Drives:  We host a couple of Blood Drives each year here at St. John Church for the Anchorage Blood Bank.