Recovery Ministries – Aldersgate UMC, St Louis Park
We have been focusing on an organization called Perspectives. This group supports adults and children recovering from abusive situations and helps them heal and become independent. Part of their program provides after school care for elementary age children to help with homework and teach cooking skills and healthy eating habits. Our congregation has helped paint one of the classrooms and washed toys. Once each month we send 5-6 of our adult and high school members to help out at the Kid’s Café. A group of the kids in the program come to the kids café area to help prepare the evening meal for the whole group. Under the guidance of Chef Dan, we help the kids prepare the entrée, salad, dessert and bread. During the summer months when there isn’t school, several adults and kids from Aldersgate go to the park near the Perspective housing complex to help serve hot dogs, play basketball and do crafts with the families. The program at Perspectives relies on the members of the community to volunteer in the program to help the clients feel welcomed into the community. This a good way for our congregation to participate in something meaningful for the community and share our love of children. Both the children and those in our congregation have been positively impacted by our interactions with each other.
Our tendency in the past was to do helpful projects within our own church. We would invite the neighborhood folks to our events, but we limited ourselves to what was comfortable for us. Through the HCI we learned that we needed to extend our boundaries farther into the community. Working with Perspectives is increasing our awareness of a bigger part of our community and giving us the opportunity to use the skills we have in a wider area. This has been a great growth opportunity and the volunteers and enjoying working with the kids and families.
First three steps – The mission committee, staff and HCI members looked at our community to see what opportunities were available. Then we contacted several the schools and local organizations to see if there were existing programs that would need volunteers. We received a positive response from Perspectives and began working with their social worker to see how we would fit in. One Sunday following church, we took a group of people interested in doing the volunteering to Perspectives for a tour and an information session on what we would be doing. It was a great way for us to understand how the organization worked so we could help the best way possible. We arranged to go to the Kids Café every 4th Friday of the month to help and then had our members sign up for the times that worked best.
For information contact Serena Steffenhagen, the Aldersgate church secretary at 952-929-6725 or