Outreach
What is Outreach Ministry?
Outreach is looking beyond your own life and parish. Actively seeking out the less fortunate, poor, struggling, ill, and forgotten people of the community and this world, in order to share the love of Christ as you work to meet their needs to the best of your abilities.
What is the mission of Outreach?
As disciples of Jesus, the members of St. Anne’s Episcopal Church take our gifts of time, talent and treasure into the community. By doing so, we reach out to and support those who need a helping hand.
Ongoing Activities
Seasonal Activities
This is an Episcopal Fund that provides grants for Episcopal projects around the world. An example might be a grant to build a ramp to make a church more accessible to the people of that community, or establishing a refugee program in a safe country where individuals can learn another language and job skills needed to survive after fleeing their home country. During the UTO season, you are encouraged to keep a box/bank and each day spend a few moments to reflect on the blessings in your day. As you reflect, you convert that blessing into a monetary donation that goes into the box, could be anything from a penny to hundreds of dollars depending on your situation. But your blessings are collected and used with others’ to pass that blessing on to someone else in the world who is struggling in some way. UTO typically begins ______ and ends _______.
Each year Everlasting Life Ministries provides holiday meals for up to 700 individuals at Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Our congregation goes out to stores to purchase 700 pieces of fresh fruit and delivers it to ELM for each of the three events, so that each meal contains at least one piece of fresh fruit per person.
Each year, working with the staff at Mosser Nursing home, we solicit Christmas wishes from the residents. Those “Christmas Wishes” are placed on ornaments which hang on a Christmas tree in the parish hall. Members of our congregation and visitors are able to take an ornament and shop for those gifts. They return the wrapped gifts to the church on a specific day, and then all of the gifts are delivered to Mosser for their resident Christmas party. This way every resident (some of whom have no one other than St. Anne’s to remember them) receives a present for Christmas.
Each year we provide Christmas cards to our congregation to fill out for Nursing Home residents. We create enough cards for all of the residents to receive one, each of the four weeks of Advent.
Each fall we collect gently used winter coats, gloves, hats, scarves, as well as purchasing new coats from an annual sale at Burlington Coat Factory to provide to Everlasting Life Ministry for distribution in center city Allentown.
In August, there is a Mustang Car Show in Macungie. At this show St Anne’s mans a table with literature explaining what it means to be Episcopalian, as specifically what it is to be a member of St Anne’s. We also donate baskets, created and donated by our parishioners, toward the raffle held at the car show. Baskets range from food oriented to events and gift cards!
Each February the Sunday School class determines a charity that they would like to raise awareness about and collect funds to support. They are in charge of making announcements leading up to Super Bowl regarding which charity they have chosen and why. On the Sunday of the Super Bowl, the children stand in the back of the church with large SOUP pots to collect donations as people leave the service.
Leading up to August, the congregation donates school supplies
We work with various organizations and individuals as needs arise or are brought to our attention. Some examples in the past year are:
Collaborating with East Penn school district’s Angel Network which gathers many organizations together toward a common goal for children and their families within the East Penn School District, such as donating 138 soup cans (to be combined with all the other organizations designated food donations) and physically assisting high school students to pack grocery boxes to be delivered to families who qualify for free lunches in the school.
We purchased the items needed and addressed the landscaping needs of an elderly couple who could no longer keep their lot in shape.
Financial support for a family struggling to get their 6yr old son to California each month for infusions in a drug trial to treat his brain cancer.
Financial support for a family raising the funds to buy a handicapped van so they can take their wheelchair bound daughter on outings and family adventures.
Donating Grocery gift card to the social work office in East Penn School District to be provided to homeless families within the school district.
Financial Support to Lower Macungie Middle School to cover expenses of a field trip for students otherwise unable to attend.
Purchasing gifts for an entire family for Christmas based on identified needs from Everlasting Life Ministries.
Financial Support to organizations responding to natural disasters and world-wide needs, such as Episcopal Relief and Development, Red Cross, Salvation Army.
Quarterly our Outreach visits Daybreak, a ministry supported by Lehigh County Conference of Churches. We serve a meal purchased and prepared by members of our congregation to as many as 75 persons in need. Additional parishioners bake desserts which also go along to the meal as extra take aways for the individuals. During this effort we are able to spend fellowship time with those we are serving.
Fifteen times a year, members of our ‘bread run team’ pick up hundreds of bread and pastry items from Giant Food Market and deliver these items to the 8th st Salvation Army. The Salvation Army then makes these items available to those they serve from this location in downtown Allentown.
St Anne’s is an official collection site for Cell Phone for Soldiers. We have a drop box outside the front door of the church that can be accessed to drop off cell phones at any time of the day. Any cell phone you may have that is no longer needed can be dropped off in this box – just the phone, no accessories please. These phones are sent to CPFS who may refurbish the phones so that they may be used by our military heroes or their families to communicate. The phones that can not be refurbished are broken down and precious metals are removed and sold, the proceeds of which provide “calling minutes” for the military families.
St. Anne’s sponsors two to three blood drives a year at the church with Miller Keystone Blood Bank. In addition to supplying a life-saving commodity to the community, by being active donors, members of St Anne’s Church (even those who have not donated) are assured coverage of blood needs through Keystone Blood Bank regardless of insurance status should they have an emergency. If you would decide to donate at another location, you can still provide St Anne’s registration number and St Anne’s will be credited with your donation. The number is 0681. For all questions about requirements for donation please use this link: https://www.giveapint.org/
When the crises in Afghan and Ukraine occurred, we opened a clothing/household goods bank in two of the classrooms in our education wing, to provide for the needs of those fleeing the oppression in their home countries.
We have been collecting non prescription medical supplies and delivering them to St Mary’s Ukrainian Church in Allentown. St Mary’s is connected with other organizations working to fill planes donated by the Ukrainian Postal Services, and flown by volunteer pilots, to take the supplies to the Ukraine to assist the thousands of injured by the war. St Anne’s has also provided monetary gifts to support the cost of fuel and care of the pilots.
Weekly our congregation and those in our community drop off food, hygiene supplies, and grocery gift cards at the church, which are then delivered to Everlasting Life Ministries to help supply their food bank. Their food bank serves hundreds of people in need in and around Allentown.
We have multiple members of our congregation that deliver Meals on Wheels and others that help staff the Meals on Wheels facility to put the meals together and distribute to the delivery drivers.
Each week at both the 8am and 10am services you can purchase gift cards for Giant, Weiss, and Wegmans. You pay the exact amount of the gift card, no additional fees, but then when the card is used the store reimburses St Anne’s 5% of the total value. You spend nothing extra, yet provide 5% of your grocery bill to the St Anne’s Outreach Ministry to continue serving our community! (Ruth Davis 8am, John Sibre 10am)
All of our Outreach programs were started by suggestions from people in the church and surrounding community. We would love to hear your ideas and identify more people we can serve through Christ’s love and teachings. Contact us.
