Worcester Fellowship imagines a church where people with housing and people without housing gather together to share worship, to build community, to know God’s infinite love and find ‘home’ as part of the Body of Christ, the Church.
We meet outside every Sunday on Worcester Common, serving lunch to those in need and then gathering for worship. Our mission is to end isolation by nurturing community and providing pastoral care. Our theology is simply God loves you now. On the streets this message is profound: God loves you before you get clean and sober, before you get treatment for your mental health issues, before you fix your life, even before you ask forgiveness for all those things you have done wrong. It turns out this message is profound for people with housing, as well, and for all who have found the threshold of the indoor church to be a difficult barrier to cross.
The general ministry posture for us at Worcester Fellowship is to engage in an intentional ministry of presence. Much of what we do can best be described as “loitering with intent”. For pastoral care this takes the form of street and park ministry, hanging out in shelters and soup kitchens, and visiting people in the hospital and prison. For nurturing community we have lunch, worship, bible study, leadership meetings and retreats, member led weekday ministries, socials, mission projects, and visits to our indoor supporting churches.
In order to live into this Mission we believe that multi-denominational expressions of church, especially in the field of domestic mission, is a critically important tool for outreach and evangelism to the outcast and marginalized folks that we see as those who are in particular need of finding ways to end their isolation by nurturing community and providing the pastoral care that indoor churches are often ill-equipped to provide, or will not provide to this particular demographic.
We meet outside every Sunday on Worcester Common, serving lunch to those in need and then gathering for worship. Our mission is to end isolation by nurturing community and providing pastoral care. Our theology is simply God loves you now. On the streets this message is profound: God loves you before you get clean and sober, before you get treatment for your mental health issues, before you fix your life, even before you ask forgiveness for all those things you have done wrong. It turns out this message is profound for people with housing, as well, and for all who have found the threshold of the indoor church to be a difficult barrier to cross.
The general ministry posture for us at Worcester Fellowship is to engage in an intentional ministry of presence. Much of what we do can best be described as “loitering with intent”. For pastoral care this takes the form of street and park ministry, hanging out in shelters and soup kitchens, and visiting people in the hospital and prison. For nurturing community we have lunch, worship, bible study, leadership meetings and retreats, member led weekday ministries, socials, mission projects, and visits to our indoor supporting churches.
In order to live into this Mission we believe that multi-denominational expressions of church, especially in the field of domestic mission, is a critically important tool for outreach and evangelism to the outcast and marginalized folks that we see as those who are in particular need of finding ways to end their isolation by nurturing community and providing the pastoral care that indoor churches are often ill-equipped to provide, or will not provide to this particular demographic.
