New Beginnings
Christian Community

Pastors Elizabeth Emrey, Brenda Brown-Grooms and Rev. Greg Moyer
1130 East Market Street, Charlottesville, VA 22902
(434) 964-6314 lizemrey@yahoo.com , bbrowngrooms@gmail.com
www.newbeginningschristiancommunity.com
501c3 #3125 Federal Identification Number 54-2057721

Dear Friend,

As we enter the 21st year of New Beginnings Christian Community’s ministry in this vineyard of God’s kingdom, we look back with gratitude and some nostalgia.

Pastor Liz, our founding pastor, has heard God’s call to retire on June 2nd, right after her eightieth birthday. We are preparing for this transition with “Thriving Congregations,” a Lilly Foundation project which offers churches/mosques/synagogues the chance to closely examine their ministries, where they have been, where they are going and how to get there. Rev. Greg is on a much-deserved sabbatical until December.  Pastor Brenda is doing well on dialysis, preaching and preparing for a life restoring kidney transplant.

Our Food Ministry, which feeds 300 families a week with 18 volunteers from our church and the community, continues to be vitally important to this paradoxically rich city that is also a food desert for the poor and unhoused. We continue to work with institutions dedicated to providing decent, affordable housing, health care and prison reform.

Ministry always costs money.  We cannot thank you enough for all the money, time, talent and prayers you have so generously, so consistently shared with New Beginnings Christian Community.

 

This year, we provided $25,270 in emergency assistance for:

• 9    families and individuals facing eviction

• 30 individuals with gas for work, medical appointments and food delivery

• 4 families whose utilities were being shut off

• 4 people needing food for the special diets of people undergoing chemotherapy and who have diabetes, and immigrants whose religious practices put strictures on allowed food preparations

• 4 Pampers for newborns and depends for adult protection

We visited the sick and those in prison.  We buried several dear members this year.  Others are valiantly fighting cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, COPD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.  Others are faithful caregivers. We contributed $988 to ABCOTS (American Baptist Churches of the South) fund for disaster relief.  Rev. Greg’s Thursday Bible Study raised $ 7,860 for in an orphanage in Uganda and HIV medication in Columbia.
 

In case you do not know, it is your faithfulness as benefactors and co-servants of the ministry of New Beginnings Christian Community, that helps keep our doors open—serving an almost unbelievable number of individuals and communities in need of basic necessities for daily survival.  “Thank you” is not nearly enough to say in response to your continued miraculous generosity.  And yet, we say it with all our hearts.  THANK YOU.

May God bless you, as you bless others.

Your fellow servants in ministry,
Pastor Liz   Pastor Brenda   Rev. Greg