Our outreach and service is guided by Jesus’s command to love our neighbor and build the Beloved Community. Here are a variety of opportunities to love and serve our community.
Contact Joy Shillingsburg, Director of Outreach, outreach@stjohnswf.com.
***If you are interested in learning more about becoming a certified volunteer for our new Afghan Refugee Ministry please see the INSTRUCTIONS
and contact Joy at outreach@stjohnswf.com if you have questions***
Outreach Opportunities:
Wake Forest Community Meal Program: Learn more about our Monday and Wednesday night meal program that provides dinner, produce and groceries to our neighbors who are experiencing food insecurity. We plan to continue through the summer and have added additional volunteer slots. Please be sure to read our to learn more details and sign up.
If you would like to make desserts on Monday nights so that we can add a sweet treat to the meal bags- SIGN UP HERE
If you would like to distribute meals, produce and groceries on Monday and Wednesday evenings. SIGN UP HERE
NEW WAKE FOREST COMMUNITY MEAL SITE: Together with ONE Wake, Friendship Chapel Baptist Church and Wake Forest Community Meals volunteers we are now serving meals on Tuesday nights from 5:30-6:30 to the residents at Wellington Park Mobile Home Community. We plan to join the residents’ meeting each week as they face the sale of the mobile home park to a large developer to serve food, advocate their cause with Town leaders and walk with them through this extremely stressful time.
Backpack Buddies: Northeast Wake Backpack Buddies continues to pack over 500 bags of shelf stable meals and snacks for children in our community from the lower level of the St. John’s Education Building. These bags go to children in the WCPSS and the Community Meal Program each week
This group leads faith reflection and action on environmental crises such as climate change, and promotes individual and community-wide actions to improve our stewardship of the Earth. This group planted and maintains a lovely Pollinator Garden between our main church and Education buildings as a teaching garden for our preschool and parish community.
Church Net is a Wake Forest coalition of churches that provides financial resources to pay for prescriptions and utility bills for people in the community. Donations are collected at St. John’s. Church Net office is staffed by volunteers from local churches.
Our Joy of Christmas ministry provides gifts and gift cards to local families and seniors at Christmas.
TAM collects donations of food and necessities for distribution to local families. St. John’s has been a part of this organization since its inception and continues to support TAM’s nearly 9,000 clients each year with food donations. When we are back to in person worship, look for the red wagon in the Narthex to deposit food and hygiene items. Visit their website for more information and volunteer opportunities.
Hope House is a ministry of Friendship Chapel Baptist Church. St. John’s supports this ministry which serves weeknight meals and builds relationships in Northeast Wake Forest.
St. John’s participates in a coalition of local churches to help build and fund affordable housing with soon-to-be-homeowner families in Wake Forest.
This ministry packs food weekly during the school year for food-insecure students at local schools.
Each September, many St. John’s parishioners take a 1-mile or 3-mile walk to help raise money to fight hunger locally and around the world.
St. John’s has been the organizing partner of this program housed at the Alston Massenburg Center in which we’ve joined over a dozen church and civic groups to share meals and playtime with children and families in Northeast Wake Forest for 10 weeks during the summer when food insecurity increases for children in traditional calendar schools. This summer program has now been extended due to COVID-19 to serve the food-insecure in our community every Monday night at Hope House from 5:00-6:00 pm and every Wednesday night at Olive Branch Baptist Church from 6:00-7:00 pm. Dinner plates, Backpack Buddies Bags, clothing from Note-in-the-Pocket, and shelf- stable food from Tri-Area Ministries (TAM) and the Northern Community Food Security Team are distributed each week.
ONE Wake is a broad-based, multi-racial, multi-faith organization of 40+ faith communities and non-profits across Wake County. Members of St. John’s work with other leaders from ONE Wake member institutions to research and propose specific local initiatives to address issues creating pressure for Wake County residents such as a shortage of affordable housing and problems in public education. ONE Wake leverages the collective influence of faith communities and community non-profits to create positive change.