Community Outreach
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Put feet to your faith by serving our community.
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Join members of The University Church community as we partner with local service organizations across the Toledo area. On the first Tuesday of each month, we reach out to help a neighborhood organization. Times and locations vary from month to month. We serve at many locations, including:
- St. Paul’s Community Center
- Cherry Street Mission
- The Servant Leadership Center
- Toledo Seagate Foodbank
- The Feed Your Neighbor Program
- Monroe Street Community Gardens
- The Collingwood Arts Center
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We have an ongoing relationship with our neighborhood elementary school and we provide access to a teacher’s supply partner to help equip teachers with the supplies that they need to educate our children. We volunteer to help with activities in the school on a regular basis. Here are some photographs from the day on which the children underwent State-mandated testing and we worked to make sure that each child had a good breakfast before the testing began.
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Helping families who are experiencing homelessness.
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The University Church partners with Family Promise of Greater Toledo (previously The Interfaith Hospitality Network) to assist people experiencing homelessness. Some churches make space available in their buildings. We don’t have a building that is suitable for hosting guests overnight and so we provide the people needed to serve as dinner hosts, overnight hosts and cooks, while also providing food for meals. Our goal is to offer hospitality to families who might otherwise be broken up and separated because of their situation. You can find out more about Family Promise at their web site.
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Did you ever try to get a job when you can’t keep yourself clean?
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As a church family, we maintain an ongoing collection of personal care products (soap, toothpaste, combs, deodorant, etc.) and encourage each other to bring these items to our worship gatherings on Sunday evenings. The items we collect are delivered to Lutheran Social Services of Northwest Ohio who utilize their distribution network to ensure that the personal care products reach those who need them. Simply by taking advantage of “buy one, get one free” offers at your local store, you can participate in helping people with no real cost to yourself! What possible reason could there be not to do this? We can’t think of one.