Our Ministries

Each Sunday in worship, children are recognized with a simple prayer or blessing. Preschool and elementary-age children are welcome to remain with their parents for the entire worship, or to leave during the sermon time and join in crafts or other children’s activities. (There is also a nursery with several cribs available for infants.)

We’re about to launch an experiment for the fall of 2021, inviting any who would wish to stay from some after-worship activities, starting with a simple lunch. Kids activities following lunch will include a play room for toddlers, a pre-k through 3rd class, and an older class charting their own adventure as they form “Jesus’ Team.” Occasionally, children would practice during this time for the Children’s Choir as well!

We also regularly send youth groups to our denominational National Youth Conference, the next of which will come in Summer 2022. We appreciate our youth taking part in leadership: singing (solos, or with the praise team), joining teams, and taking minutes for church meetings are all ways youth have served the church in the past.

Finally, as our youth graduate and head to college as young adults, we’re thankful to be able to offer scholarships through the Studebaker Scholarship fund to our active attenders to support ongoing education.

The congregation has assisted with basic practical needs of families moving into the community.  Pastors and church members also accompany persons by providing transportation and going with them to appointments as needed. Additional ways of offering support include encouragement through the complex legal process as needed, serving as translators, and providing spiritual support. Pastor Irv traveled to Guatemala to support one member in his application process for residency.  This member is now a US citizen. 

The congregation has also arranged to provide some financial support for the challenging legal process of seeking asylum and residency.  For this, a legal aid fund has been established by the congregation and generous donations from members and persons outside the congregation have made significant assistance possible.  Grants given from this fund help persons with connections to the church meet the high costs of pursuing permanent status.  

Emotional and spiritual support through multilingual worship and the loving social network of friends made in the congregation provide an important foundation of support and encouragement.  The congregation is committed to being a sanctuary community for immigrants and refugees. Without them, the congregation would not be the beautiful community it has become!  

To give to the Legal Aid Fund …

Seeking out a partnership with a local community development worker, Juan Pablo Morales Miguel, plans were made in coordination with local leaders. In the year 2020, some land was rented in the most remote areas for growing corn. Beyond the reach of cars, this land was affordable at a rate such that one year’s investment in the rental, seed money, and tools allowed some 30 large families in Estrella del Norte to then renew the land rental, re-plant, and continue independently for the future.

Now, in 2021, another 30-some families in Tochosh and Nueva Villa are raising pigs in the limited areas that they have adjacent to their own homes. If all goes well, this project will also transition into being completely self-sustaining, providing food security and some economic opportunity.

We are so grateful for the support of Rock Run Church of the Brethren, in Northern Indiana, who helped raise about a third of the funds used in these projects, and for another significant portion that was a grant from the Global Mission Office of the Church of the Brethren, alongside contributions from West Charleston’s own members.

This October (2021), we will sponsor a flight for Juan Pablo to come visit us in person, and hear from him not only about our small project, but broader themes of the work: all the factors that create such hardship in Central America, the reasons so many choose to migrate, and what that migration does to the communities that people are leaving.

• On Monday mornings, the Quilters meet in the church from around 9 to 11:30. This is ostensibly to make the blankets, prayer shawls, and other items that are donated to a variety of causes, but it’s also just a good excuse to get together! The group has tended to be composed of senior women, but they have permitted a millennial male pastor to join too… 🙂
• Tuesday evenings at 7:00, a book study group meets on the church’s Zoom, using the same link as for joining worship [julie please link ‘worship’ too]. This group has been meeting off and on since late summer 2020, beginning with books such as The Color of Compromise, investigating the church’s role in society’s conversations on race in the wake of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Recently, the group has read fiction in While Justice Sleeps and a study of inequality, Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live – And How Their Wealth Harms Us All.
• On Wednesday mornings, a “Sunday School” group meets at 11:00 for Bible study following the Church of the Brethren’s quarterly curriculum. This group also meets using the same Zoom link as worship [link again here]. Closed Captioning, available during worship, is made use of here also for accessibility.
• For the fall of 2021, we are also experimenting with in-person activities available each week after hybrid worship. We begin with a simple shared lunch, followed by a diversity of activities: several classes for kids ranging preschool through youth, an adult class offered bilingually in English and Spanish, and rehearsal for the Praise Team which would be recently expanding again after the pandemic. This is intended to be a laid-back format, so that it’s sustainable instead of draining, and allowing the flexibility for a family to perhaps send Mom to Bible study, Dad to the praise team, and kids to their activities, with no one left out. And, these activities aim to wrap up by 1:00, so that we’re all still free to make the most of our Sunday afternoons!