A Moment with your Mission Centre President Team feat. Debra Donohue

This week we offer this column to Debra Donohue, Creating Connection Director for Canada West Mission, who brings us some exciting news! 

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"Creating Connection One Person at a Time"
Written by Debra Donohue 
Creating Connection Director Canada West
debra@communityofchrist.ca
1-877-411-2632 ext. 4

I want to share some news with you that I am very excited about.  My role as Creating Connection Director for Western Canada will be changing a little.

Before I became the Creating Connection Director, I was the Congregational Outreach Specialist for BC.  Now I have been given the opportunity to take the best of what I learned as Congregational Outreach Specialist, and the best of what I learned as Creating Connection Director, to embark on a new vision of Creating Connection.

I hope to become a bridge between Community of Christ and your local communities.  I know that many of you already have wonderful relationships with your communities.  It’s my hope to build on those relationships through the resources and advertising we can do through meetup.com and other platforms.  Rather than create new projects and extra work, I want to take the good work you are already doing and promote it, ask for volunteers from the community, and ultimately introduce like minded people in your communities to you in a way that is comfortable for you both. Of course, I would love to help you with your new ideas too.

I’ll be communicating with the Pastors, Pastorate and Leaders in your areas to find out where I can be the most help and I ideally, we’ll have a group from each congregation that may or may not include the pastor to figure out what areas I can assist with. Please let me, or your leadership team, know if you would like to be part of an informative zoom call. For you to gather information from me, and for me to gather information from you.

In Creating Connection we’ve had great success advertising on Meetup.com, Facebook and Eventbrite.  Through meetup, we can really pinpoint our message to people in your local areas. I’ll give you some examples of activities I’m thinking about.

Does your congregation or group do a Peace Walk, or a River Cleanup, or a day at the Food Bank, or provide Christmas gifts to a charity or neighbours?  Do you have an online activity like prayer shawl knitting, or a conversation group you could invite people to join?  Do you hold a workday at your church building or campground where we could invite others in the community to volunteer? I can help connect you with like minded people in your community who want to be part of something meaningful.  They may not realize yet who we are in Community of Christ, and how similar our feelings are towards inclusivity, peace and justice, environmental causes, and supporting community.

I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas.  Please reach out me by phone or email or connect with your pastor. To learn more about Creating Connection events visit the Creating Connection Meetup Event Page! 

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​Yours in Christ,
Gwyn, Kat, and Shannon
gwyn@communityofchrist.ca
​kat@communityofchrist.ca
smcadam@communityofchrist.ca

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