To Serve Humankind in Fellowship

Our church board has chosen “reaching out to our greater community”as one of three major goals for this church year. This fits our covenant “toserve humankind in fellowship.” This month’s column provides a briefoverview and some questions about our progress in reaching this goal.

We have become more generous on Sunday mornings, direct 15% of each Sunday’scollection to a local charity. Sharing our collection has raised thousands ofdollars for charity. This is welcome news, but is it enough? Should we be expandingour generosity beyond the Sunday collection plate? Should we consider includingfunds earmarked for charitable purposes as part of our annual church budget?Should we plan on sharing a percentage of future bequestswith our community?

Hunger and homelessness continue to plague our community. We have respondedto these challenges by supporting the Westside Food Bank with food and assistancewith sorting food, Step Up on Second by preparing a monthly meal, and TurningPoint by providing meals for some holidays. We are becoming more involved withthe Westside Shelter and HungerCoalition (WSHC), which is a consortium of public and private social serviceagencies and faith-based organizationsdedicated to reducing the burden of hunger and homelessness in our community.A major new project of the WSHC is a pair of cold/wet weather shelters for homelesspeople in West Los Angeles and Culver City. Another project is a “VolunteerDay” in early February for faith-based institutions. These two projectshave arisen since our annual issues election in September and both are askingfor volunteer support. How should we respond to this call for volunteers?

The FIA speaker series is open to the public and we are planning two new outreachprograms. One is led by Cathie Gentile and deals with economic justice. Theother is led by Simon Huss, Rachel Donaldson, and S. J. Guidotti and involvesa UUSC program known as the Free Speech Project. Should we do more? Please sende-mail commentson this question to Charles Haskell.

-- Charles Haskell
Chair, FIA Commission

Calling all Food Sorters! You’re needed December 10

The Westside Food Bank again needs our help for a food sort on Wednesday, December10, from 5 to 7 p.m., at the Food Bank, 1710 22nd St., Santa Monica. Last December,26 people from our church broke the food bank’s record for sorting —filling 11 pallets with 528 boxes of food weighing 14,400 pounds. We also hada good time organizing the food so that those who need it can receive it. Ifyou can join the food sorters, please contact Paula Bernstein.