Dear Friends and Family,

This month we welcome two very anticipated additions to our staff team – Kip and Dana Givens!

Kip has been an ordained minister for over 15 years, serving in a wide array of roles including Youth Pastor, Associate Pastor, Senior Pastor, and Lead Church Planter (planting one church in Illinois and another in Nebraska). In addition, he has written several books and contributed to news publications and online magazines. In his spare time, Kip loves to read (his favorite topics are grace, love, justice, and activism), listen to music (mostly the loud and hard kind), smoke cigars, and spend time with his beautiful wife and family.

Dana has been involved in several different ministries throughout her life,i ncluding Master’s Commission and an internship at the St. Louis Dream Center. Through these experiences she has come to the conclusion that “her life is not her own, but it’s about serving others, specifically the outcast.” She is happily married to Kip, “the love of her life,” and loves spending time with him and their family.  She also loves animals (dachshunds topping the charts), tattoos, styling hair and makeup, spending quality time with friends, and learning more about the things she is passionate about.
With Kip and Dana we also inherit their amazing kids, Tal and Emily, into the MCD family.  A four-for-one deal- God is good!  We look forward in anticipation to the further good things God will bring us in and through the Givens in the days ahead!

-Christian Gray, Emissary

SupportWorks

In the fall of 2008, we officially launched SupportWorks. We started by training and equipping individuals that were interested in being in a supportive, whole relationship with those in need. The subsequent steps to the initial training have been and will be connecting and pairing folks into these holistic relationships, working with the local church body to find those individuals or small groups that desire to be a part of these relationships and learning what it takes to facilitate and support these relationships as they grow. It has been humbling to watch God’s creative hand at work in the sharing of lives between individuals from different backgrounds. It has been humbling to see positive transformation occur even though we are still learning and at the beginning of the process. The next months the majority of my energy will be spent networking with the local body of Christ to open the opportunity up to enter into a SupportWorks relationship either as individuals or small group communities. I deeply believe that all of us who love Christ and chose to follow up Him know deeply that we have been given much and so in turn we have much to give. Please pray with us for all the relationships that are currently being fostered through SupportWorks.

Katie Ursini, SupportWork Ministry Director

Park Avenue

This month we celebrate the one year anniversary of Neighbors United, a collaborative group of Park Avenue area faith leaders and parishioners committed to responding relationally to pressing needs and concerns in the neighborhood–and this has been no small year! Mosaic Community Development has had the honor of organizing and facilitating this group since its birth in January 2008.

What began as a roundtable discussion and information sharing session twelve months ago has developed into a dynamic, action oriented collaborative body focused on grassroots community building and development.  Neighbors United launched its most recent initiative, the Community Meals, in September 2008; the initiative has become a smashing success. In just four and half months we have seen a number of substantial accomplishments:

· Over 2,700 hot meals have been served

· Over 130 volunteers have participated.

· Two neighbors (formerly homeless) are now in housing.

· Thirteen faith communities have successfully worked together to feed neighbors and build relationships.

· Hundreds of winter clothing items have been collected and distributed.

· Over 145 meals are served each week.

Along with these quantifiable outcomes come many other equally valuable, though often intangible, accomplishments.  Innumerable and invaluable relationships are developing among neighbors, parishioners, and faith leaders–many of whom look, speak, and behave much differently than each other.  Children are finding creative stimulation for their imaginations in the arts and craft corner.  Neighbors are finding a warm place of rest and conversation.

And so, our work continues.  This month over 20 faith leaders and parishioners from the neighborhood gathered to brainstorm what might be possible in 2009.  Ideas included community gardening, health screenings and monthly barber visits at the Community Meals, as well as long term interest in a community center.  In the words of poet Elizabeth Alexander, “[We] know there’s something better down the road…We walk into that which we cannot yet see…”

This year we have truly been blessed–blessed by the creativity of kids in the neighborhood, faith leaders and parishioners motivated by their faith commitments to act locally, and neighbors who stop us on the street just to check in.  And, we are becoming increasingly aware that is through the interconnections of these blessings that holistic transformation is possible for us, our neighbors, and our neighborhoods.

Brittany Hanson, Coordinator of New Program Development