St James as part of the Wooster downtown church walking tour 12/1/2006.
(from The Daily Record)
Mission is an essential part of St. James life. We try to
incorporate an outreach component to everything we do.
Global
- 7% of the Budget is dedicated to Millenium Development Goals. Those funds are divided between: CAMO (Central America Medical Outreach in Honduras) and MARIFIKI Children’s Center (an AIDS orphanage in Kenya)
- Besides sending money, we have parishioners who go to to Honduras to work with CAMO. We also send sewing supplies. We support them beyond the designated funds.
- We helped sponsor our seminarian to go to Marifiki Orphanage and sent boxes of children’s books. We support them financially apart from designated funds and have had the founder, program director, and treasurer at St. James to speak. We hope to plan a parish trip there in 2008.
Domestic
- We are most known in the community for hosting eleven different 12 Step Groups. The following is the schedule of 12 Step meetings at St. James throughout the week.
- We support Episcopal Community Services and Episcopal Relief and Development with Annual Campaigns.
- We are involved in several area ecumenical agencies.
- We donate and furnish the two story apartment above the office in partnership with Wooster Interfaith Housing. We have had three previously homeless families living in it. We also sell pins to support Wooster Interfaith Housing.
- We hold Spring and Fall Brownbag Concert Series that support the Viola Startzman Free Health Clinic. These concerts raise close to $2,000 a year. There are also many members of the parish who volunteer their time and services at the clinic.
- We have monthly food collections and a 2,000 lb food drive for People to People Ministries in Wooster, which we call a Ton of Love. We also assist in the Back to School Project and the Holiday Toy Project. Our Ton of Love Project has collected over 8,000 lbs of food in the last four years. We have many people who volunteer weekly at People to People ministries.
- We host a community Blessing of the Animals at which we collect donations of food and money for People to People Ministries.
- We participate in ecumenical Habitat For Humanity builds in Wooster and the surrounding areas.
- We are a contributing church to Meals Together which offers a free dinner ever Thursday evening. We host the entire meal once a year.
- We collect small bottles of toiletries and cell phone for the battered women’s shelter, Every Woman’s House. We typically donate two large black bags of toiletries a summer.
- We financially support all the above agencies as well as Salvation Army, for which we do bell ringing during the holiday season.
- We have been collecting pennies since Lent for a feeding program. We have over $250.00 to date.
- We use only Fair Trade Coffee for church gatherings.