Outreach

St. Mary’s Food Pantry Ministries

St. Mary’s supports two local food pantries. We encourage you to bring non-perishable items to help us stock these food pantries! Looking for suggestions? The button below directs you to a shopping list! Leave your food donations at St. Mary’s in the basket by the Chapel. The Food Pantry Committee will transport them to these two pantries: The Student Food Pantry and FISH (Friends in Service to Humanity)

Saturday Breakfast - Feed Our Hungry Neighbors

St. Mary’s feeds over 1,800 of our hungry neighbors every month through our weekly Saturday breakfast. This amazing ministry relies on volunteers. Will you join us and sign up to prepare breakfast and/or deliver to the various sites in town? Visit our SignUp.com page by clicking the button below and see the variety of tasks you can sign up for. Sign up alone or with a friend. If you have questions or cannot sign up online, reach out to Dick Zeller rwzeller@comcast.net or Holly Cabell hollycabell@gmail.com. This institution is an equal opportunity employer and provider.

Turning Your Bottles and Cans into Housing

Through our bottle and can redemption efforts, we are supporting our unhoused neighbors! We have already adopted four huts through Community Supported Shelters, in the name of St. Mary’s. This is an ongoing fundraiser to support Community Supported Shelters. We are well on our way to the $3,000 needed to adopt a fifth hut. Many parishioners collect bottles and cans from neighbors, too. Every little bit helps to provide housing to those in need. We have pre-labeled Bottle Drop collection bags for you to take home and fill. Return them to us or take them directly to Bottle Drop.

The Earth Care Interfaith Fund - A Local Partnership For Addressing Your Carbon Footprint

If you have ever worried about your “carbon footprint” or wanted to support local ecological restoration, this partnership enables you to make a difference. The Earth Care Interfaith Fund was created by local faith community leaders in 2017 to support the values of people of faith in the greater Eugene-Springfield area for the” stewardship of creation” through partnerships with local organizations. This joint fund, shared between the Long Tom Watershed Council and McKenzie River Trust, supports activities and materials for planting, plant establishment (maintenance of plantings), and plant conservation in the Long Tom Watershed Council and McKenzie River Trust service areas and provide much needed local match funding for the council’s important work in the watershed. Trees, shrubs, and other plants, have the ability to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere. Planting and maintaining trees serves to address concerns for many people about their carbon footprint. Use the button below to support this important fund.

Earth Stewards

We are a group of members who are concerned about lowering energy use and costs both for individual families and the church and thus helping to preserve our environment for future generations. We have put on programs to help our parishioners be better stewards of God's creation by reducing their carbon footprint, reducing their waste, and living more simply. We have helped the church become more "green" with various efforts such as green solutions on building upgrades, implementing compost, using recycled material, and upgrading to "green" cleaning materials.

Ho!Ho!Ho!

This is the ECW Christmas stocking project, chaired by Deacon Nancy Crawford. A sewing party to make the stockings from donated fabric is held at the church in November and with the help of many parishioners, young and old, approximately 170 stockings are made, filled, and distributed. Many people are blessed by this ministry, from the fillers and the receivers to the caseworkers who presented the stockings to delighted parents for their children.

United Thank Offering

United Thank Offering is an ingathering taken annually at churches throughout the Diocese and is our chance to give thanks for our blessings through giving. The money is used to create projects around the world that care for the poor.

Jail/Prison Ministry

Jail/Prison Ministry provides an opportunity for Christians to live their faith by helping prisoners while incarcerated and to return to the community.

Missionary Work

Bob and Joyce Carlson – Wycliffe Bible Translators: Members of St. Mary’s since 1982, Bob and Joyce Carlson continue to spend most of their time in Africa as part of Wycliffe Bible Translators non-denominational missionary team. Bob has recently completed the translation of the New Testament into the Supyire It has been published and distributed to speakers of this Senoufo language in Farakala, Mali.

Joyce continues to assist Bob and to work on her own literacy project - a cultural anthropological study of children’s school enrollment and education and its place in the social structure and of the Malian family.

The birthday and anniversary money that is put in the small wooden church on the first Sunday of every month is an offering that is given to the Carlsons’ ministry. Additional gifts of support are accepted throughout the year.

To keep up with the Carlsons, check out their website: http://www.askingfortheroad.com/

Allocation of Outreach Funds

Each year St. Mary’s budgets and distributes funds to local ministries and agencies that work to improve lives in our community. In 2024, funds were distributed to Beyond Toxic Environmental Justice Program, Centro Latino, Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon, HIV Alliance, Refugee Resettlement of Lane County, That's My Farmer, TransPonder, and Whitebird. The allocation of funds process begins with a parish-wide survey to determine which areas we want to focus on: Immediate Needs, Prevention, Environmental Stewardship, and Policy Change Advocacy. Watch for this survey to be distributed in the fall.

Thank you, Len!

The video above is a clip from the 11 AM service on Sunday, November 17, when the Rev. Bingham Powell took a few moments to thank Len for his dedication to environmental stewardship, in particular his dedication to getting solar panels installed at St. Mary’s! Thank you, Len, for your years of hard work as you continuously helped us take better care of this beautiful earth that God has created.