- If you know where there is roadside trash such as tires, appliances and other debris littering the countryside around Manteca, you are being asked to email jdm6208@charter.net with the location and a general description. Crossroads Grace will use the information to deploy crews to pick it up and haul it away. The information is needed by Friday.
Mike Moore equates it to doing Jesus Christ’s work outside of the box as in the four walls of a church.
It is why Crossroads Grace Community is setting aside church services this Sunday and instead is “Takin’ it to the Streets”. More than 1,000 people are expected to tackle 21 different projects ranging from planting 250 trees along the Moffat Boulevard leg of the Tidewater Bikeway to clearing up a section of the Tuolumne River in Modesto that is near a homeless encampment while feeding the homeless at the same time.
“Small acts of kindness with great love will change the world,” Moore said.
The effort Sunday is an outgrowth of the 2nd Saturday community outreach for the past 15 months that has seen a growing group of congregation members - and even some non-church members – come together to do everything from gleaning fruit for the needy and cleaning up yards for the elderly or doing litter pick-up and landscape trimming along the Tidewater. Sometimes the 2nd Saturday outreach is simply visiting people who can’t get out – such as at convalescent hospitals.
The decision to go ahead with “Takin’ it to the Streets” is a leap of faith on the part of Crossroads Grace Church. The church’s budget didn’t include forgoing one service that will reduce revenue flow.
Even so, Moore said they decided to proceed.
Other projects planned for Saturday include cleaning a disabled couple’s yard, cleaning up a Modesto mobile home park, doing basic yard work and fixing a rear fence at the South County Crisis Center, trimming hedges along the Tidewater Bike Path, assist in washing food bins and labeling cans at Second Harvest Food Bank, replacing a fence for a widow, county road clean-up, and fire hydrant painting among others.
Information on all 21 projects plus sign-up forms is available by going to www.crossroadsgrace.org and clicking on the “Takin’ it to the Streets” box.
“We’re saved not by our good deeds but saved to do good deeds,” Moore noted.
Moore noted what Crossroads Grace is undertaking is part of a greater trend that is underway in Christianity including in Manteca through such churches as Calvary Community and Southside Christian in reaching out beyond the walls of their church not to try and convert people but to serve the community where there is a pressing need.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, e-mail dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
