Rev. Bard’s motto of “come to worship, leave to serve” still guides St. Andrew’s mission emphases. St. Andrew has local relationships with our neighborhood school, Devonshire “Project Adventure” Elementary, and with NNEMAP Food Pantry (Near North Emergency Material Assistance Program).
With Devonshire, we created tutoring programs and “adopted” families at Christmas. For years we have collected hundreds of dollars of school supplies and now have several St. Andrewites involved in the “Reading Buddies” program.
The needs of a metropolitan area like Columbus are many and varied, and the well-organized pantry at 677 E. 11th Avenue serves almost 2,000 clients every year. We define our “neighborhood” as “anywhere people are in need,” and have increased St. Andrew’s participation in the mission of NNEMAP: regular collections of canned and dry goods; baby supplies; supporting “Souper” Sunday; selling Fraser fir trees and wreaths; supporting the annual concert, “Harmony for Hunger”; collecting hundreds of toys and organizing and staffing the Christmas Shoppe.
Since1997 our congregation provides a “Second Sunday Offering,” an extra-commitment offering received in addition to the weekly offering. This offering supports local and global mission projects and also raises awareness and provide opportunities for service.
St. Andrew also participates in the four church wide Special Offerings of the Presbyterian Church (USA) which are a collective witness to Jesus Christ’s love for The Whole church. One Great Hour of Sharing, Pentecost offering, Peach & Global Witness Offering, and Christmas Joy Offering offer opportunities for partnership, learning, and witness and profoundly affect the life of the church as a collective witness to Jesus Christ’s love for the whole church.
You may find St Andrew members on mission trips throughout the US. More recently they have traveled to West Virginia, Tennessee and the Gulf Coast to help communities recover from tornadoes, fires, hurricanes or other natural disasters have left them in need of assistance.
The Vegetable Patch, a project started in 2011 using Grow Boxes, harvested 400-600 pounds of summer produce like tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers for the NNMAP food pantry and delivered it fresh every week.
In the Church hallway is a neat, well-organized and well labeled collection area with baskets for mission related items: old eyeglasses for the Lions Club of Ohio; pull tabs to take to Ronald McDonald House a; Campbell soup labels and cereal box tops for Devonshire Elementary School; and used ink cartridges.
