By Rev. James Jacobs
As Pastor of Greater Buffalo Run Valley United Methodist Church in the State College District, I asked the parishioners to start thinking about out-of-the-box outreach opportunities considering the traditional methods of outreach didn’t seem to be working.
The congregation wholeheartedly agreed and formulated an outreach team to come up with new, innovative, and different ways to reach out to our community. Two pages of ideas later several of those out of the box projects have been implemented, some worked and some didn’t.
An outreach program idea one of the parishioners came up with is called “Wood for Good”.
This parishioner approached me with concern for the many people that heat their homes with firewood who either can’t go out in the woods to cut anymore, don’t have the availability of open forest lands to go cut in, or can’t afford to buy firewood.
The parishioner (Craig) asked, “Do you think this is something we might explore?” Considering I believe that “empowered people do great things” I told the parishioner, “It’s your idea, you run with it and we will support you.”
Within 3 months we now have an established “Wood for Good” program. Craig tirelessly worked to formulate a detailed implementation plan, a safety plan, and wrote a grant to the Department of Agricultural which has a green heating imitative. The project received a $10,000 grant to purchase the equipment needed to implement the initiative.
Craig then formed a team of parishioners that have built firewood storage racks and contacted local landscapers and tree trimming companies that have agreed to deliver trees that have been cut down for use in the initiative.
A group of men and women from the church cut and split the donated wood each month.
We started collecting names of folks that would like to receive wood from the people that come to our church food bank. The need was clearly there and our list of folks that have requested support with free firewood is growing, not only from our food bank visitors but others in the community.
This initiative is a classic case of a parishioner coming up with an out-of-the-box-idea, the pastor empowering the parishioner to take charge, and we now have an initiative that is fulfilling a community need. The hands and feet of Jesus Christ...using a chain saw and wood splitter!
