Deacons Offering

Did you know??

Several times a week-sometimes several times a day! - the Westminster office receives phone calls from local Dubuquers needing help with their utility payments, rent, gasoline, or other expenditures. We answer the phone, and the voice on the other end might belong to a young mother needing help buying diapers for her newborn, or to a man who recently lost his wife to cancer and needs to feed his teenage sons, or to an elderly woman whose Social Security doesn't pay enough to heat her house. Often these request will come through a representative from Operation: New View, a community action agency whose mission is to field calls, identify people and their needs, and find ways to assist. It is tempting to keep an arm's distance from these people. It is tempting to be sympathetic to their plight, then hang up the phone, go home, and snuggle into the safety of our world. But is this how Christ calls us to act?

Most of us have never been to the end of the line, reduced to calling churches for help. We recognize this, and show our gratitude in our own individual ways. But it is important for us to be grateful as a church body.

This is why Westminster has the Deacons Emergency Fund.

Since the 1990s, the Deacons Emergency Fund has been used to help almost 2000 local people meet their immediate, emergency needs through small donations. But the fund gives more than just money; it give hope. Jesus himself said that we will always have poverty (see Luke 12:8), but it is in how we respond to it that we share God's message of love. Every time we give to the fund we are sharing our hope and participating in a miracle for someone else. WE can be the answer to someone's prayer.