For us, love is a verb and faith is something that takes on life when it is lived. In a typical month, members of our church can be seen bringing food for the Food Bank, feeding and helping care for the homeless, giving their money for ministries of compassion in our community and the larger world, and living out their faith in countless other ways.
Through our giving and volunteering we want to be connected to such local ecumenical ministries as MIFA, the Church Health Center, and Memphis Theological Seminary. We are also committed to the mission efforts of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church both within and outside the United States. In fact, last summer two of our members headed with a group of Cumberland Presbyterians on a mission trip to Uganda, and in late December/early January four of our young adults will be going on a denominational mission trip to Colombia, South America.
Closer to home, others from our congregation have been on missions to storm-ravaged communities in the U.S. In our own community our congregation reached out last year through its annual fall festival to help a young adult in the surrounding English Meadows neighborhood with the expenses resulting from a double-lung transplant.
Recently we have answered a call to forge a regular partnership with the Room in the Inn Memphis homeless ministry during the winter of 2012/2013. We have also assisted for the past three years with Colonial Cumberland Presbyterian Church’s summer camp for neighborhood children.
One of our members shared this testimony about our ministry of Outreach:
C.P. Church of Germantown has provided my children and me many opportunities to participate in outreach in the community. Through our church, I have had the chance to work at Habitat for Humanity, MIFA, and First Presbyterian soup kitchen , just to name a few. My children have also been able to work at the soup kitchen and participate in activities like the thirty hour famine. These experiences have helped teach them the importance of giving back to the community. This community of faith embraces the neighborhood we live in with VBS, picnics on the front lawn, and open times for prayer in the sanctuary that allow us to share our love of God and each other. Just this summer my daughter and I volunteered to feed the campers at the Colonial C.P. Church summer camp for neighborhood children. I enjoyed my interaction with these sweet children, but also really enjoyed working along side fellow members of my own church family and watching several of our own young adults who staff this camp. This is a church that embraces outreach in a very personal and caring way.
