5. Mission and Outreach
UPC’s Fresh Start program
Our Fresh Start program has been very active in 2016, and we have employed 11 people who have been formerly incarcerated; in total, these employees provided more than 2,200 hours of labor to our church. Participants also are required to attend a peer support group in which they are able to discuss employment challenges as well as other reentry challenges. We have also utilized the Fresh Start positions to provide volunteer opportunities for individuals meeting court-ordered required community service.
A new aspect of our Fresh Start program this year: We now offer micro-loans to people who are in housing transition, providing funds for them to make their security deposits when they begin a new lease. The micro-loans are then paid back in small increments, for example $5 or $10 per week, and loan recipients can also volunteer service hours to reduce their loan balance.
Water Protectors witness trip and prayer service
Late in October, Pastor Kimberly joined a vanload of Christian leaders to answer the call from the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota nations to come to Standing Rock, North Dakota. The call was to religious leaders to stand with the “Water Protectors” who are attempting to keep their sacred lands intact against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which will cut across lands never ceded by treaty and threaten the water supply of everyone who draws from the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers.
As part of this witness, Kimberly and the cohort she traveled with joined with other Christian denominations in repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, and a copy of it was burned. They joined in prayer with the indigenous people around the sacred fire, then processed to the bridge that has been a focus for conflict since last summer, and communion was celebrated there.
While there, Pastor Kimberly discovered two other friends from Binghamton who had not traveled together and did not know the others were going: Gary Doupe, retired UMC pastor, Douglas Taylor, minister at the Unitarian Universalist church. It was fun to share a spiritual experience far from home, and when they came back they decided to invite the community to join in prayer for the efforts at Standing Rock.
On December 4, about 50 people gathered to sing, to pray, to light candles, and to lift up the Water Protectors and the water that is life in our world. It was a beautiful and peaceful interfaith service; we were joined by Rabbi Goldman-Wartell to broaden our witness.
Now after a series of victories, the efforts of the Water Protectors are under threat. While preparing this newsletter, we have learned that President Trump has signed an executive order to move quickly to approve the pipeline. Prayers and actions are still needed, and we invite you to join us in lifting up the problem and the people who are working to save these sacred lands.
Community Engagement Task Force
The “Toxic Charity” book study group has been challenged to consider our UPC mission programs in view of the book's premises that many well-intentioned mission/charity programs actually create dependency, rather than changing the lives of the recipients of those programs.
Since the UPC congregation has not reviewed or evaluated our mission programs recently, the Session created a 2017 Community Engagement Task Force to research our programs as well as community organizations and needs to determine the general direction of our future mission activities.
If you want to know more about the Task Force, contact Dave Ruston.