CarePortal church’s day full of blessing

One Missouri church recently gathered together for a special one day event with one mission: to bless people. From our perspective, their mission was accomplished and then some.

Around 30 of Lynwood Baptist Church’s life groups worked to meet their mission during their City2City event held on Saturday, July 13 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

Planning for the event started months prior. Pastor Kevin Coffee reflected, “we’d been thinking and praying about how we could bless our community to share God’s love.”

Over the coming months, the church set aside a reserve fund to serve the community. The life groups met together to plan various projects ranging from providing care packages to the homeless, gift cards for groceries, all the way to meeting CarePortal requests and more.

“Opportunities like City2City mean that we can share the love of God with people who might not be ready to receive it otherwise. By meeting physical needs, it may open up a door to share the gospel, but our hope is simply to help people who are hurting,” said Pastor Coffee.

Lynwood is grateful to have the ability to use CarePortal to easily connect with children and families that have needs in their area.

“CarePortal allows us to push back suffering in our community in the name of Christ,” said Pastor Coffee.

One life group was able to meet 12 CarePortal requests by the end of the day, including fixing an air conditioning unit and providing clothes and school supplies. The group also handmade 20 twin bed frames and 10 bunk bed frames that they donated to CarePortal.

Shelly Gerard, CarePortal Regional Manager was thrilled with the outcome of the event. “What I loved most that is was not about Lynwood it was about loving on people. It was about going, doing and relationship. I love that they included CarePortal to be such a big part of the event,” said Shelly. “A lot of church members got to experience delivery for the first time. Sometimes that is the biggest obstacle going to the unknown, but once you step out of that comfort zone you ask yourself, ‘Why didn’t I participate sooner?’”

In addition to the City2City event on July 13, Lynwood Baptist also hosted a training for around 50 local caseworkers on Friday, July 12. The church hosted the breakfast to thank the caseworkers who are working so hard in their community to help children in need. The caseworkers all received thank you letters each filled with a $100 gift card.

We are so grateful for churches like Lynwood Baptist that are wrapping around God’s children in their local community and blessing many. It is wonderful to see churches successfully utilizing CarePortal to help identify those that need the most help. Our hope is to enable more churches around the United States to continue to bless children and families in crisis.

Interested in learning how to open your church’s arms to local children and families in crisis? Please visit https://careportal.org/ to learn more.