United Church keeps Christmas spirit allive all year long

News Release
UC Canada

Lights are everywhere ˜ strings of lights, nets of lights, curtains of lights; lights that twinkle, blink, or flash; lights in windows and in stores; lights on doors, trees, rooflines, and lawn reindeer. Christmas lights appear long before Christmas, but they disappear soon afterward. When we pull the plug and store the lights for another year, it is good to remember that we aren‚t packing the spirit of Christmas away as well.
In the United Church, we continue the work of Christmas all year long through what we call the Mission and Service (M&S) Fund. In many small and incremental ways as well as in large and impressive ways, the Mission and Service Fund enables the United Church to be bearers of Christmas until the lights reappear next December.
Many organizations work for a better world, addressing one cause or another. The Mission and Service Fund, on the other hand, is the unique way that the United Church gives witness to God’s love, whether it be with overseas partners or with outreach ministries here in Canada.
It is not really possible to compare the Mission and Service Fund to any charity ˜ it is much bigger, more encompassing than that.
The Mission and Service Fund represents our collective way to be God’s presence in the world ˜ to be the church, to love and serve, to seek justice, to live with respect in creation. It gives the United Church a collective voice in advocating change, justice, and peace, whether through the Canadian government or in work with our ecumenical partners. The Mission and Service Fund ensures that as Christians we are participating together in all of this work and more.
The fund began in 1928 as the Missionary and Maintenance Fund. Today, renamed the Mission and Service Fund, it finances an enormous amount of varied work, supported entirely by voluntary gifts from the people of the United Church.
Gifts to the Mission and Service Fund since 1928 have exceeded one billion dollars. This money is spent in hundreds of different ways: schooling for orphan girls in Africa, emergency assistance in global crises, ongoing work for women’s rights in Guatemala. It supports the homeless in Vancouver, a Deaf School in St. John’s, emergency shelters in Toronto, and small, struggling congregations in northern Alberta. It supports ministry training, hospital chaplains, and the operations of the national office that enable this work, developing policies around housing, gambling, energy concerns, and refugees; joining worldwide coalitions to demand human rights and justice; and joining the fight to clean up the environment. All of it is paid for with gifts to the Mission and Service Fund.
The Mission and Service Fund is about all the work of the United Church.
Today, many people face difficult and trying times. The Mission and Service Fund finances work that brings spiritual guidance and support to people where they live their daily lives ˜ in drop-in centres, food banks, coffee shops, hospitals, universities, and places of worship.