Opportunities for Service

Upholding service as central to a life of trying to follow Jesus, we continually seek opportunities to help those in need. In our local community, we support and guide the Hilltop Preschool, sponsor Boy Scout and Cub Scout troops, specifically Boy Scout Troop #728 and Cub Scout Pack #728, and soon, Venture Crew #728, as well as providing a meeting and meal place for Senior Connections Friendship Café #20. We also collect for a Lakeside Area Ministries Board food pantry called LAMB’S Basket, serve a first Tuesday meal each month at the Freedom House Community Shelter, volunteer on the third Tuesday at the Community Kitchen of the Central Virginia Food Bank, and house and feed the homeless in our church facility the first week of December as a part of a community program called CARITAS (Congregations Around Richmond Inolved to Assure Shelter). We participate in the Church World Service annual area CROP Walk and financially support and refer people in need to Henrico County's ISH program. Our congregation has also worked with the local Habitat for Humanity, providing money and occasional volunteer labor.

In the larger world community, we connect with others through financial support and volunteer efforts to the Church of the Brethren Mission and Ministry Board; to On Earth Peace in the promotion of peace; to Bridgewater College and Bethany Theological Seminary in the education of students and leaders; to the Virlina District in supporting the ministries of 92 Church of the Brethren congregations in parts of Virginia and North Carolina, and to Virlina District’s Camp Bethel in the Christian nurture of young and old amid an outdoor setting. Young people from our church have been and are involved as both campers and counselors at the camp, which is in Fincastle, Virginia. Our congregation also encourages and coordinates participation in Disaster Ministries, a program that provides work and childcare to those who have suffered from natural catastrophes. For some years, members of West Richmond have traveled on medical mission teams to the impoverished country of Haiti. Out of these teams, a Midwives for Haiti Project has been seeded to provide trained attendants for women and babies during childbirth.

Here's one of our own... Nadene Brunk is her pink Midwives for Haiti (M4H) scrubs and also the 1988 Jeep Wrangler that has been modified for the extremely rough terrain in Haiti. It's been painted to match the M4H scrubs!