#LoveOurNeighbors #NewTestamentGiving
In 2025, a total of 165 youth and adults joined FaithX service trips and had the opportunity to engage in service, learn new skills, grow in faith, explore interesting places, live in community, and build friendships!
The Church of the Brethren’s Global Food Initiative (GFI) is a partner organization to Bread for the World and contributes to its reporting and research on US policies and on both domestic and international food security. For 2024, the GFI helped provide funds to support Bread for the World’s Policy Research Institute that has been studying and monitoring what the World Food Program has labeled “Hunger Hot Spots”
A number of grants have been made recently from Church of the Brethren denominational funds including the Emergency Disaster Fund (EDF) for disaster relief, the Global Food Initiative fund (GFI) for food security, and the Brethren Faith in Action fund (BFIA) to support congregational outreach projects.
Our church at Shepherd’s Heart Fellowship in Osceola, Ind., has many outreach programs that extend heartfelt help to our neighbors, such as our monthly Community Meals and the Paper and Hygiene Products Pantry. But we found as we prayed for these individuals, and as we got to know them and we built relationships, that there were greater and deeper needs in our neighborhood. We also found, as we attempted to assist, there were not any programs built into our ministries to specifically help people outside the church congregation. Our resources were focused on the body, but not those unconnected. So we began a new ministry, which we deemed “Hands of the King.”
The volunteers from Brethren Volunteer Service (BVS) Unit 338 have begun work at their project sites, after completing orientation earlier this month. This was the fall 2025 unit of BVS.
On Sept. 22, the Church of the Brethren and other plaintiffs filed their opening brief in their appeal of the district court’s decision denying their motion for a preliminary injunction in Mennonite USA v. DHS.
At the Church of the Brethren Annual Conference this summer, On Earth Peace challenged the denomination to raise $100,000 to provide a Legal and Mutual Aid Fund to support Church of the Brethren members facing challenges as a result of the detention and deportation efforts of agencies that are part of the government’s Homeland Security administration.
Children’s Disaster Services (CDS) will be serving on Sunday, Sept. 14, with a team of three volunteers providing care and a calm presence for young children at the Mother Lode Fairgrounds Local Assistance Center (LAC) in Sonoma, Calif. The LAC has been organized in response to the Lightning Fire Complex.
The Church of the Brethren’s South Central Indiana District is helping to raise funds for the water ministry of Andrews Church of the Brethren at the district conference to be held this Saturday, Sept. 13.
On Aug. 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane and became one of the most deadly and destructive storms on record. Twenty years later, Brethren Disaster Ministries remembers the impact, response, collaboration, innovation, and recovery on the Gulf Coast.
