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Paying it forward: Ashburn church gives back to community
Sometimes you want to make a difference, but you feel like your schedule is already too full. Crossroads United Methodist Church in Ashburn has a solution: to incorporate community service time into the regular Sunday morning service.
Every month with a fifth Sunday, the leadership of Crossroads United Methodist Church in Ashburn organizes an outreach program called 4/5, which takes place during what would have been the service time of the fifth Sunday.
“It really is part of the DNA, the lifeblood of our church, to help people,” pastor Dave Norman said.
The program derives its name from the fact that there are four months every year with five Sundays.
The church held its first outreach Sunday on the fifth Sunday in March. In only three Sundays of 4/5, Crossroads has performed 48 missions, doing blood drives, canned food drives, barbecues for the homeless and sending care packages to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things.
“We're not just giving stuff, we're building relationships,” said Liz Schnelzer, missions organizer at Crossroads. “We're trying to make the community feel more like a community.”
The group makes a point of making the missions kid-friendly, so the whole family can be involved. The next 4/5 outreach Sunday, on Nov. 29, will feature a new mission called Pencils for Peace, in which school supplies are sent overseas to children in Afghanistan.
Schnelzer hopes 4/5 will help the community to come together “not just to worship in the sanctuary, but to worship God together as people.”
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