The Church at Severn Run is all about reaching people for Jesus. Our motto is to “Love Well, Live Jesus, and Believe Big”. We want to be a church that emulates the church in Acts, that steps up and sees the needs and the brokenness around us and does something about it (like the parable of the Good Samaritan). We want to exist in such a way that if our doors closed tomorrow, the community would notice and our presence would be missed. In order to accomplish this, we have prayed a lot, and implemented a foundational principal of “Integral Missions”, where we do life outside the walls of the church building in a way that focuses on relationships, and loving people the way God calls us to.
We have several initiatives that we are working on for 2018 including launching a recovery center for the massive Opioid/Addiction problems facing our area. (Anne Arundel County is 4th in the nation right now with overdoses and deaths.) We also are starting ministries geared toward hungry and homeless children and families through backpack programs in the schools and by visiting and forming relationships with people in the many homeless camps in our area. (There are a lot of camps - and many of them have children, especially teens. Social services often takes the children from the parents.)
Other ministries we run through our campus are things like the Kairos prison ministry, CAP -Christian Assistance Program, Celebrate Recovery, God's Heart, and Operation Christmas Child (OCC). We are not only a regional OCC drop off center, but each year we have several hundred people sign up to go to the processing center hub in Columbia and help them get the boxes packed, inspected, and shipped. (Adrienne and her son Gavin took Cindy French's son Tyler to volunteer recently for OCC, pictured left.)
We also currently partner with a few amazing local ministries including the Transformation Center, The Well, and The Broken Wall that are also living out Integral Missions. Currently, the Transformation Center in Brooklyn, MD has a weekly clothing and food distribution program for over 100 people and it is growing. We partner with them weekly through resources, food, and volunteers to make it happen. But it doesn’t stop there. In fact, this is only a stepping stone in the vision they have for the future of the community that includes a scholarship based school, job program, GED program, etc. You can find more information at:
The Transformation Center (click here.)
And their Facebook page (click here.)
The Well runs mentorship programs, especially for at risk women and children in the Curtis Bay area. They want to empower people to change, so it's not a hand out, it’s a help up. We just partnered with them for their Christmas toy store where over 1200 toys were available at the cost of $2 per toy, so that parents could have Christmas presents for their children. Their vision and information can also be found by clicking on these links for their website and Facebook pages:
And their Facebook page (click here.)
The Broken Wall is in Catonsville and they seek to reach as many people in their area as possible, especially by working through the local school, North Bend Elementary School. They have been welcomed with open arms into the community and the school in order to bring about lasting change for the better. They do a lot with the youth in the area and are able to reach them through activities especially sports. You can find their information by clicking on these links:
And their Facebook page (click here.)
For more information about The Church at Severn Run you can click here.
Adrienne Castle is one of Dankmeyer's Patient Services Coordinators. Many of the projects she lists above are independent of the church. She notes that many school programs require community service to graduate and some of the links she provides above might be helpful to those looking for ideas to complete their service hours. Prison and addiction programs are limited to those 18 and over.