Sunday service

Nearly 2,000 volunteers from the Chapel Hill church congregation will work on 70-plus humanitarian projects

Joan Cronk

Special to the Gateway

Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church in Gig Harbor knows more than a little bit about giving back. On Sunday, regular church services will be canceled so volunteers from the church can fan throughout the community to serve in a variety of areas.

The church has talked for a while about being a “church without walls” and decided it was time to get down to business.

Pastor Mark Toone said the church is hoping for 2,000 volunteers. At last Sunday’s services, several hundred more folks signed up.

“Our hope is that there would be people who would hear about this effort to reach out to our community in service and love, and sign up,” Toone said. “Folks who might not even call themselves Presbyterians or even Christians.”

All are welcome.

Everyone can do something, Toone said.

“To the person who says, ‘I’m not in,’ ” he said, “I would want to ask them — ‘why aren’t you in?’ ”

He added that caring for the poor, the disenfranchised and the forgotten part of our society mattered a great deal to Jesus Christ, and it should matter to us, as well.

Sheila Mischke, Director of Missions at Chapel Hill, said the church began this effort by gathering a group of about 30 people for a planning team. They went to the congregation and asked for help in targeting areas of need.

About eight weeks later, they came up with a list of 74 projects — and that’s where the hard work began.

On Sunday, Mischke said there will be “people on work sites with babies in backpacks and folks up to 90 years old” working side by side at various locations in Tacoma, Kitsap County, Gig Harbor and on Key Peninsula.

Beth Burgess was one of the volunteers to sign up, and she’ll be working with a team on a project through the Tacoma Rescue Mission. They will work alongside residents of Tyler Square on South Tyler Street in Tacoma.

Tyler Square is a transitional housing project. The volunteers’ goal is to build additional garden space.

“One garden has been built,” Burgess said, “but we want to build a large garden area, and the long-term goal is that residents will be able to grow their own food.”

They also hope to produce a bumper crop so they can donate food to local food banks, and possibly sell some to local farmers’ markets.

What Burgess thinks is special is that they aren’t just hoping to complete the garden project in a day. They hope to begin to build relationships with residents of Tyler Square.

Burgess, whose two children, ages 6 and 10, will be working along with her and her husband, said the residents will have an ownership in the garden. When they move from the transitional housing into their own homes, their experience may help them to work with others less fortunate, she said.

“We’re not just blowing in there and doing it for them as they watch,” Burgess said. “They have a vested interest in the garden and get to experience what it is like to come together as a community.”

Volunteer coordinator Julie Newton couldn’t agree more.

Newton, who started attending Chapel Hill in January, said the church’s desire to move in this direction was one of the reasons she decided to become an active part of the congregation.

Jim and Jan Leigh plan to grab their paint brushes and head to the Burley area. Their group plans to paint the outside of a 110-year-old home, then paint the Burley Post Office.

“I’m excited about ‘Go Sunday,’ ” Jim said. “The whole concept about all of the projects is that it is a great way for our church to serve the community.”

Jim and Jan are retired and have honed their buildings skills through their work with Habitat for Humanity. They have traveled to the New Orleans area four times to help and couldn’t wait to get on board when the “Go Sunday” project was launched.

Toone said he isn’t surprised with the response from the folks at Chapel Hill.

“Our congregation has always had a heart for service and for reaching out to the community,” he said.

Toone said the congregation has been blessed with resources and facilities, but “there reaches a point where the congregation needs to decide, ‘Are we going to continue just to take, take, take, or learn what it means to give in more significant ways?’ ”

Chapel Hill has had an outreach program that works with the prison ministry, in local schools and internationally, but Toone said he’s pleased the congregation is rolling up their sleeves and “getting their fingernails dirty.”

Toone said the church has been like a teenager, sometimes taking more than its share.

“Like teenagers,” he said, “we were growing fast and consuming a lot, but there reaches a point in a congregation that we had to decide, ‘Do we continue to be clothed and fed like that, or do we turn into an adult and give ourselves away?’ ”

The church expects about 2,000 on Sunday.

“It has to be about clothing the naked and befriending the lonesome,” Toone said. “We can’t claim to be followers of Christ and not do what Christ said.”

Joan Cronk is a freelance writer. She can be reached by e-mail at JoanCronk@comcast.net.