Serving God’s People Outside of Our Church

Community cookie-bake; August 6 from 1:30 to 4pm (subject to change).

One initiative that the Fellowship team have been focusing on this year, is making connections with the local community in Dover and Greater Forest Lawn who are not already part of Emmanuel community church. Some of them – most of them, probably – are not even part of any Christian church. And that’s okay. Christ calls us to serve, and not to be self-serving. Part of that work has been connecting with the community social worker at Dover Community Association to explore what the needs are in this community: not just the physical needs of the most disadvantaged parts of the community who need food, shelter, and addiction recovery; but also the needs of working people, ordinary people with children and stretched budgets and inaccessable extended family. One of the big needs for those members of the neighbourhood, as for all of us, is simple connectedness. People need to meet one another and find roots within the neighbourhood. And roots is something that Emmanuel, with its sixty-plus years in Dover/Forest Lawn, has in spades.

We also have what is possibly the nicest kitchen in the whole area! So on August 6, we will be partnering with Dover Community Association and the City of Calgary to hold a community cookie-bake. We’re inviting a maximum of 16 people to come and bake a batch of cookies together. It will be a chance to share a traditional English sugar-cookie recipe, compare different cookie cutters, roll out dough together while we chat and joke together, and generally experience the kind of community that many of us at Emmanuel can remember from childhood experiences baking cookies with cousins at Granma’s house, or with siblings and friends making heart-cookies at Valentine’s day or pumpkin cookies for Hallowe’en.

Every connection that we make in this neighbourhood grows our influence for good in the community and builds our strength for answering God’s call to service.