Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana

Love INC coming to greater Whitehall area

If you attended Whitehall Frontier Days 'Spirit of Montana' parade last month, you might have received a bottle of water with an attached card telling a little about Love INC, passed out from our float. Love INC is short for 'Love In The Name of Christ', an organization with the mission of mobilizing local churches to transform lives and communities in the name of Christ. That is accomplished through networking local churches, church volunteers and community organizations to help community folk in need. Love INC receives requests for assistance, screens those requests and attempts to provide a link to a local church ministry, church volunteer who can help with those specific needs, or community agency that can help. The greater Whitehall Christian community is hoping to form a local affiliate of Love INC for our community.

The process began with a few people in our area becoming aware of and learning more about the Love INC affiliate in Bozeman, MT who then began to visit area churches to explore vision and interest. A familiar theme emerged around both the desire to be of help to folks in our community and the frustration of being able to do only so much, mostly with just a few dollars here and there in each church – quite often to transient folk passing through, rather than folks with whom more lasting relationships could be built. While realizing that the Whitehall area is incredibly generous when a crisis such as a medical need or house fire occurs it was decided that Love INC could be a way to do more together for smaller ongoing needs, coordinating our efforts to provide the help needed and building more of the person-to-person relationships we wanted.

Some Whitehall pastors formed the nominating committee that involved others and moved to create and train a Developmental Board, which has been meeting for some months. We are working on filing for non-profit status, are in the process of creating an operating board, are obtaining a bank account, and are planning toward a community kickoff. We have a location for our office and have been in touch with several community agencies to see how Love INC could coordinate with services already being provided, with enthusiastic response. Presentations in local churches have led to pledges of monetary support and volunteer skills. Monies pledged and released from the once more active Whitehall Ministerial Association helped to get us going this far, for which we are very grateful.

So what does all this mean? Is Love INC too 'official' and nationally-affiliated? Is it too big for a smaller community like Whitehall? Will there be enough monetary and volunteer support to have the kind of impact we dream of? Could we do it in a less formal way and still provide the help? Those have all been topics of discussion in our developmental process.

Yet, we still believe in the process, the vision and the need for something like this. Everyone involved understands that Love INC in our area will not look like it does in Bozeman, or Denver or anywhere else. We want to create a Love INC affiliate to fit the size, resources and the particular needs of OUR community. And we like having the support and experience of an organization that since its founding in 1977 has formed 140 Love INC affiliates in thirty US states, represents a network of more than 9,000 churches, 7,000 community-based organizations, and 300,000 volunteers meeting more than one million needs each year!

Please think about your own possible involvement with Love INC's Christian effort to link people in need with local volunteers, churches and organizations who could help. It can be as simple as chopping wood, changing a light bulb or providing a ride to a medical appointment.

Over time, it could address a family's needs for lasting life changes or a community's need to address deep issues like poverty and hopelessness. You can learn more at http://www.loveinc.org. You can discuss it in your church, and request a presentation if you like. You can connect with any of our Developmental Board members, starting with Dave Greep (459-2306) or Leslie Alley (498-5616). You will be hearing more about our efforts in and for the Whitehall area as we go along. Jesus said that even a cup of cold water given in his name is a huge blessing, to both giver and receiver. How true.

 

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