Social Action Committee

The mission of the Social Action Committee is to understand and proclaim Christ's compassion for all people, by awareness and involvement in social issues and through intentional outreach to the community. The committee seeks to educate, challenge, encourage, and provide opportunities for the congregation to demonstrate Christ's response to social needs and injustices, thus moving people toward Christ.

This past year, our efforts in the area of educating the congregation were focused on planning Central's 2nd Annual Christian Growth Speaker Series, last March, where Dr. Ronald J. Sider challenged those who attended from Central and area churches to bridge the tragic division between Christians who emphasize evangelism but neglect people's physical needs and those who offer social services but do not understand or communicate the importance of a living relationship with God in Christ. Our work for the remainder of the year was aimed at providing opportunities for the congregation to bring together word and deed by serving the poor in our community and world in the name of the Savior who longs to reconcile and restore a lost and broken world.

Central continued to provide volunteers and collect food several times during the year for the Assistance Center of Towson Churches. In the spring, members and friends responded enthusiastically to the Precious Life Baby Shower providing diapers, clothing and other needed items for area crisis pregnancy centers. We continued to support the Agape Family Empowerment Center by helping with the annual Back to School Anointing Service and collecting coats and mittens at Christmas. Our youth helped pack school supplies at Agape and prepared a Sunday meal for the men at the Helping Up Mission and the M&M kids collected food for the Christian Community Center. Central children decorated about 150 Christmas gift bags for area AIDS patients which were than filled with small gifts, toiletries, food and the good news of the gospel by members and friends and then distributed by Love & Action. A new Central member revived our Angel Tree ministry and gathered a team to collect and distribute Christmas gifts to children with an incarcerated parent. Many Angel Tree gift recipients also attended a Happy Birthday Jesus party hosted by this Central team.

The Social Action budget includes support of twenty organizations providing holistic ministry locally, nationally and around the world. Our dedicated Habitat Team has agreed to complete five more houses over the next five years and has successfully solicited funds from our Social Action budget and individual pledges to provide the financing necessary to reach this goal. Our budget also funds small groups within Central who mentor and minister to families in crisis through the Baltimore Country Department of Social Services, special contributions for international disaster relief and emergency needs of partner ministries. We are thrilled to welcome World Relief to Baltimore. This Christian international disaster relief and refugee assistance agency moved their headquarters to Baltimore this summer. We hope there will be opportunity for direct involvement with this ministry in the future.

Finally, the Social Action Committee looks forward to embracing Central's emerging Philosophy of Ministry by forming a growing number of small teams to do hands-on holistic ministry. We have agreed to meet quarterly, instead of monthly, in 2002 in order to allow more time for us to "just do it." If you have a passion for combining evangelism and social action and/or an idea for ministry, we want to help you make it happen.