Adventist Community Services
Listening Session Reports
The mission of the Adventist Community Services department of the Florida Conference is to train, equip and deploy leaders and members of the local church for service to all people, especially people in need.
This mission is strongly embraced by the vast majority of our churches, to the extent, that they constantly and faithfully attend to the multifarious needs of people in their congregations, as well as people of the outside communities.
Several of our churches operate food kitchens that prepare and serve hot meals, either weekly or monthly, to families and individuals with this need. Some churches operate a food bank from which they distribute boxes or bags of uncooked food items to whoever shows up. At the same time some of these churches follow up with the people they serve with Bible studies.
In addition, a growing number of churches have formed a crew of voluntary
trades and “handyman” ministry, which goes around the community and identifies extreme cases of need in the areas of home maintenance, landscaping, etc. and assist people who can’t help themselves, nor afford to pay for such services.
Perhaps our busiest ministry department is the A.C.S. department, especially during the active natural disaster season: June 1 – November 30.
Our department reaches out to the local churches constantly, and especially to the ones that operate active ministries to the community. Several of our churches – at least 45% – operate weekly or monthly food banks in service to their immediate community. We have planned and hosted annual leadership and volunteer training seminars for local directors and members. In the last five years we have hosted weekend-long training seminars in North West Dade for the Lower Gold Region, in Central Florida and in the North.