Church extends acts of kindness

Saint Mark United Methodist Church on Columbiana Road is conducting an outreach program with no strings attached.

This summer, members of the Vestavia Hills church kept their eyes and hearts open for opportunities to extend acts of kindness to friends and strangers.  Members were encouraged to give away a small card with the church’s address and phone number and to thank the friend or stranger for an opportunity to express God’s love in a tangible way.  

Rev. Steve West, senior minister at the church, sees the Acts of Kindness campaign as a low-key, yet potentially very effective, way of reaching out to the community and sharing God’s love.   

“The card is a tool to let people know we love and care about them in the name of Christ and on behalf of the church, and to express that it is not because we want anything from them,” West said. “So often, people assume churches are only self-interested and this can come as a welcome surprise.”

He said that if the recipient does not already have a church home, it might just “warm someone’s heart to give church a try.”

If a person has had a negative experience with churches or church people in the past, Saint Mark hopes that an unexpected kind deed might be a turning point.

“We are hoping to create an atmosphere in our community that opens people to the love of God because others have loved them with no strings attached,” he said.

Members anonymously wrote their acts of kindness on palm-size paper leaves and hung them on one of the two small trees in gathering areas of the church.  Some placed $5 gift cards on a car windshield in the parking lot of a department store, while others took food to an elderly man, wrote a note of encouragement or took doughnuts to the fire station.

Felicia Veal, chair of the Evangelism and Communications team, said she was touched by two of the leaves.  One appeared to have been written by a child, who wrote that he or she had “shared my food with someone else when I was hungry.”  She took note of another on which someone shared how he or she watered a neighbor’s flowers.  

“If they were elderly, hey, that’s a big deal,” she said.