LOCAL MISSION

For additional information, Contact Adriane DeMoe

For online Gifts and Passions Opportunities, click here.

St. John’s Lutheran Church is a people formed in the waters of Christian baptism to be a fountain of life for all who gather, overflowing into a river of compassion for the world.

The river of compassion proclaimed in our mission statement flows in many directions and many distances. On a local level, some examples of St. John’s service are:

• Blue Christmas Service – “A Service of Comfort and Hope.”
  This is a yearly Monday evening Service the first week of December hosted by our Caring Ministry. It is a service in which we acknowledge the “blue” feelings that come with loss or hardship amid the Christmas season, and offer them to our loving God.

• Ride and Stride/Larry's Legacy Bike Ride
  For years St. John's member Larry Everson Biked for Bread. As a St. John's Ambassador, he biked to raise money for Feed My People since May 1, 1999. Over that time he biked over 64,000 miles and raised over $26,000. In May 2015 Larry retired, but the need to provide meals for children on the weekend continues to exist. Larry's Legacy Bike Ride is a fun at-your-own pace and distance bike ride to support the Weekend Kids' Meal Program, a program sponsored by Feed My People Food Bank. This event is held in June.

• Campus Harvest - UW-Eau Claire Food Pantry
• This food pantry at UW-EC was fomed to aid the high percentage of students that self-identified as in need of supplemental food assistance. As part of St. John's outreach ministry for October, we collect perishable and non-perishable food items and monetary donations.

• Our Community Table team prepares and serves a meal for the Eau Claire community every 3^rd Thursday of the month.

• Our Community & World Ministry joins with our Caring Ministry to collect items and distribute Christmas Holiday Baskets given to help church family members, non-members, and Locust Lane Elementary School families in need of help during the holiday season.

• St. John’s Quilters assemble quilts the first and last Wednesdays of each month. Some of the places where the finished quilts have been donated are: The Bolton Refuge House, Beacon House, Lutheran Social Services, Lutheran World Relief, Luther Park Bible Camp, Hope Gospel Mission and Western Dairyland.

• The Prayer Shawl Group is members of St. John’s who pray and stitch on their own blending prayers, talents, gifts and grace into beautiful prayer shawls. Prayer shawls are given to those in need of prayer and love to comfort, console and strengthen.
  A prayer shawl is intended to be a reminder of God’s ever-present love.

• Weekend Kids' Meals Program (WKMP) - St. John's Lutheran Church is a sponsor of the WKMP at Locust Lane Elementary School. Locust Lane has students that qualify for free/reduced meals. Many of these children struggle to have three healthy meals every day, especially when school meals are not available. The WKMP helps bridge that gap by providing bags containing groceries for two breakfasts & two dinners. St. John's sponsorship of the WKMP at Locust Lane includes contributing funds to cover at least half of the program's annual costs and packing some meals at Feed My People Food Bank.

• God's Work. Our Hands. - A synod-wide opportunity to celebrate who we are as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - one church, freed in Christ to serve and love our neighbor. At St. John's, we join hundreds of other congregations in reaching out to our neighbors and serving our community. In past years (usually held in September), St. John's has served a luncheon to residents at the St. John's Apartments, did landscaping projects, cut out shoe patterns for distribution in far-away countries and cleaned up a local park.

GLOBAL MISSION

For additional information, Contact Adriane DeMoe

St. John’s Lutheran Church is a people formed in the waters of Christian baptism to be a fountain of life for all who gather, overflowing into a river of compassion for the world.

On a global level, the river of compassion takes the following form:

Lutheran World Relief - We collect and distribute school kits, fabric kits, and personal care kits.

Mission Tanzania - Upon discovering that only about 1/10^th of the students at a high school in Karagwe, Tanzania were girls, St. John’s Lutheran Church became involved in a mission to support girls’ education there. Members of St. John’s and some other friends pay for 15 to 20 high school girls to attend this year-round boarding school.

Another step in this mission has been the construction of a kindergarten-through-eighth grade school (called Imani which means “faith”). St. John’s is primarily responsible for the building of this school, which teaches students in English.

It costs $800 for tuition, uniform, room and board supporting a child at Imani for the entire year. Each year the church members and some other Lutheran friends send 10 to 15 grade school students to school providing all of their tuition. All the money is donated from the member’s pockets.

There has never been fund-raising. One hundred percent of the donated money arrives at the school’s bank account. The continuing need is for tuition to support the education of these students in Tanzania, one of the greatest allies we have in Africa.

Lutheran Mideast Development – Formerly known as Lutheran Orient Mission, this is a Christian program founded in 1905 to preach the Gospel of Christ using words when necessary. One of the founding fathers was the great grandfather of one of our members – Ruth Lundblad. Their efforts are directed to the Kurdish girls and young women, particularly the area around Van, Turkey. Areas of work include: Work and Life Centers where manual and life skills are taught; Scholarship and Support where the emphasis is getting the girls to school; Family Health Care and Aid where they assist with medical aid to war refugees and displaced persons including a small clinic; and Witness and Peacemaking in which they are a part of the peacemaking process between government, clergy and lay Muslim, Christians and Jewish persons in the region.

St John’s WELCA has supported LMD for over 30 years with part of their monthly offerings and now part of our benevolence and St. John's Endowment moneys go to LMD as well as individual donors who have become interested in this effort.