First Baptist Church Cornwall, ON

Article from the Standard-Freeholder Cornwall – August 10, 2021…

Cornwall’s First Baptist Church was the place to be on Saturday if you were in need of an extra shirt or a few cups.

The church — with an army of about 25 volunteers — organized their fourth annual Big Give event. Items that were collected all year were put out on several tables and were available for free to anyone who wanted them. Although it was well attended, Saturday’s event was actually the delayed date for the effort. It originally was to be held on the first Saturday of June, as it had been in previous years. “Because of COVID, it wasn’t permitted,” said First Baptist Church senior pastor Jim Drennan. “We just delayed it and we picked the first Saturday of August. We thought that it was a good time, as restrictions had been lifted.”

The pandemic also resulted in this year’s event featuring a tad less things — missing was the bouncy castle that used to welcome kids, the BBQ and the face painting. This year, it was just the giveaway table and a table for CHRI FM, a Canadian non-profit Christian radio stations. “It’s been mayhem but in a good way,” said Drennan. “We were supposed to open at 9 a.m., but we had people here at 8 a.m. We aren’t going to tell them to wait an hour so we started it early.” By 9:30 a.m., there was a constant flow of people attending the event. This year’s Big Give was the busiest one yet according to Drennan. “We didn’t have all the bells and whistles either,” he said. “We think that the timing is good — people want to go out, do something and go somewhere.”

In order to host the Big Give, the First Baptist Church has been collecting items all year. The event itself was established for churches to give back to their communities. “Year one was really good, as was the year after that,” said Drennan. “Last year, we weren’t sure, but people kept giving us stuff and they keep giving. We had more items this year than we’ve ever had. People have lots to give.”

 


River Stone Christian Fellowship Arnprior

River Stone’s Big Give event went off perfectly. They had a little rain and some thunder as they set up and a little rain to start off but the weather cleared up and the temperature soared up to 28 degrees. The line up started at 10:05 (opening was 10:30). The pace was brisk and the the lineup was steady. At the end of the day they served up 180 bowls and cones of ice cream. Everyone seemed to have a great time. They even had a visit from their town Mayor, Mr. Walter Stack.
There were 3 other churches that took part in the event doing various things but there was more. There was a huge street give away that advertised itself as part of the Big Give. Everything was given away free of charge. So even though the pandemic has reduced our numbers the word and deeds are spreading.

 


St. Mary’s Bike Repair & Give Away

A mini BIG GIVE from our driveway – by André
Giving away re-conditioned used bikes and doing bike repair from my home driveway on BIG GIVE Saturday.
Friends offered to donate bicycles they had accumulated over the years plus a local church-based men’s organization got on-board with the project.
They spread the word to other parishes(churches) in the west end of Ottawa.
With the three dozen donated bikes, I spent the months of April and May tuning them up in my garage.
Since I also offer free tune-ups on Saturday mornings on my driveway, three neighbourhood teens have been helping out and are being trained in bike repair. These young guys have caught on to the mission and are now donating and fixing bikes for the BIG GIVE.

It seems that people who hear about the project, get excited about it and want to either participate, contribute or suggest needy recipients.
As a result, we have been able to give away three dozen bikes this year, some of them, even before the BIG GIVE date.
Another insight that has come this year…it turns out that one of the bicycle recipients this year, works for the Ottawa police. I am preparing to work with them to see how we can cooperate with kids programs and how the Ottawa police could supply some used bikes. Stay tuned for next year.

 


St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church Ottawa

St Pau’s organized a non-perishable food drive for their community collecting a large amount for the local food bank. People drove onto their site, the food was collected from their vehicle and sorted by a great team.

 


Ottawa Chinese Bible Church

OCBC provided donation card packages and potted plants to their community while being entertained with some special music.

 


Greenbelt Church

Greenbelt hosted a drive-thru drop off event with items for a local food bank as well as two crisis parenting organizations. They also had a drive-by prayer of blessing tent and a CHRI music tent. The rains didn’t dampen their enthusiasm. On July 17th, they will host a hymn sing-a-long at a local seniors residence and have provided flower baskets for the staff and cards for the residents.

 


Chapel Ridge Free Methodist Church

The Chapel Ridge Big Give was well received. We handed out 467 $5 Tim Horton’s gift cards plus personalized handwritten notes with RightNow Media plus The Chosen links (all the staff at Forest Hill and Garden Terrace Long Term Care plus at Bridlewood Trails). There were also 270 pieces of artwork given to residents at the three homes. Below are some pictures of the gift cards, drawings and happy recipients.

First Presbyterian Church Brockville, ON

With things opening up in step-one of the Provincial Plan, we were able to do our Big Give mid-June, so members of First Presbyterian Church shopped for, filled and donated 25 Blessing Bags to the Brockville and Area Food Bank.  15 of the bags were intended for families, and were filled with summer-appropriate goodies (bubbles, books, toys, personal care items, crayons, sticker books and snacks).  10 of the bags were for the homeless/transient folks in our community, and were likewise filled with personal care items, sanitizing wipes, snacks, socks, sun-hats, and books.

All the items were packed in reusable shopping bags, and included a card from our church letting the recipients know we were praying for them, and included the church phone number in case they wanted to contact us again.  Given the greater need in our community due to the pandemic, we felt that continuing this initiative (we did it in 2020 as well) was really important.

Here is a picture of our Blessings Bags: