I have mentioned several times that we are a church that priorities being generous towards the City (in fact, that's one of our 5 goals!) One of the doors that the Spirit has opened to us is an organization called MVNA.
A little over a week ago, I, along with another core participant in the plant, met with the director of development for MVNA. Out of that meeting came a deeper commitment to serving the least of these through them (97% if their clients are 200% below the poverty level). We have pledged to put them in our annual budget, do monthly service projects for them, and look for ways to work 1-on-1 with individuals. In light of our commitment, the following email was sent out by MVNA's CEO to their employees:
"Karin Meier met this past week with the pastor of the South Minneapolis Plant Church from Waconia Lutheran Church. They were a 'contact' interested in building kits for Community of Caring. She had presented to their small group one Sunday morning a couple months ago about MVNA and they built rattle racket kits for us. Several of the members have ties to the medical industry and feel like MVNA is a good fit for them. Pastor Dave contacted her a couple weeks ago to have coffee. From that meeting, this group has picked MVNA as one of their core projects, pledging $1,000 this year and they will build kits once a month for MVNA as a church but also they are doing a lot of community building and will be hosting neighborhood gatherings monthly to do MVNA kit building."
What is also exciting about all of this is the fact that our initial contact with MVNA is a nurse who lives a couple of blocks from us and is unabashedly not a believer in Christ. Not only are we helping to care for those on the fringes through this commitment, but it has also opened the door for us to share the Gospel with someone who is far from Christ. How cool is that!
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