Serve By Doing
Beyond our walls we are all about doing.
Joining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope
Many of our members are active in this grassroots organization that seeks to connect people in the Chippewa Valley and empower one another to build a healthier, more just community for all. Our church's JONAH’s Core Team coordinates actions, gathers information on justice issues at local and national levels, and shares that information with partner congregations.
Our church’s volunteer team serves lunch once every other month at this meal and hospitality site.
Our volunteers have provided supper, evening and overnight hospitality, and breakfast at Beacon House, a family homeless shelter, since its inception in 2001.
We host bloodmobiles to fill the critical need for blood.
Our young people spread cheer and good works at Eau Claire assisted living facilities, food pantries, and animal shelters.
Our urge to serve others has taken multi-age groups to Biloxi, Mississippi, to help with cleanup after Hurricane Katrina and to a Native American reservation in South Dakota. Our youth groups have traveled to Weslaco, Texas, to help immigrants arriving in the U.S.; Green Bay, Wisconsin, to repack food at a food pantry, learn about immigrant issues, and spread a semi load of wood chips at a park.
An intergenerational group travels to this Minnesota organization to pack meals for the world’s hungry children.
Laypeople are trained to offer Christian care to people experiencing hospitalization, grief, depression, loneliness, and other life challenges. Please contact the church office at 715-834-2668 to consider being trained as a Stephen Minister.
Interested in receiving care from a Stephen Minister in our congregation? Learn more by clicking here.
Ushering, greeting, serving Communion, tending our grounds, running worship audiovisuals, cooking in the kitchen, visiting not-so-out-and-about members, knitting or crocheting prayer shawls, being a prayer chain member, and volunteering in children’s and youth programs are among many ways to roll up your sleeves at the church.
Chippewa Valley Bridge Builders is a coalition of faith-based organizations and community members that is sponsoring an asylum-seeking immigrant family from Central America who arrived in the Eau Claire area in 2021. First Congregational UCC is CVBB’s fiscal agent. Although the family is legally authorized to live here, they must await federal approval to apply for a work permit and are not eligible for federal assistance programs while awaiting their asylum hearing. Their living and legal expenses are funded by the CVBB through donations and fundraisers, 100 percent of which goes directly for their needs.
As a sponsor, CVBB partners with the family on their asylum-seeking journey and provides stability for their life here. For more information, contact Greg Barnes: gregleebarnes@gmail.com.