Before I go into this next part of my three-part post, I should give you all a little bit of context into where I work, Mercy Community Church. This will be a very short little blurb about what Mercy is and does. Don’t you worry however, I will be giving a much deeper in-depth description of what Mercy does throughout the year!
Mercy Community Church is a church where the congregation is made up of mostly people struggling with homelessness and mental health issues. The founder, Chad Hyatt, saw a need within the homeless community for a place of worship, and a safe place for the community.
We start each day with songs of prayer and then we move into an hour of discussion based bible study, and on Sundays, we have a full worship service. Mercy also does programs such as yoga classes, a foot clinic to tend to the congregation’s feet, opens a clothing closet, runs an addiction recovery meeting, and takes a meal out onto the street daily.
Mercy church is very relationship-based, we have a clothing closet not because homeless people need clothes, but because Mary’s shirt is all torn up and needs a new one. (Not the exact scenario we opened up the clothing closet for, but you get what I’m meaning) The coolest thing I think about Mercy is that every day we go in, one of our main goals is to deepen those relationships we have with people and go and make a friend.
Before coming into Mercy I was expecting that Pastor Chad, Pastor Maggie, Wes (The other YAV I’m working with at Mercy) and I would be serving, and the congregation receiving, all of us teaching, and the congregation learning. However that is not the case, we are all equal in the community, we are all serving, and we are all receiving, we are all teaching, and we are all learning.
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