Missionary Work
The Brandermill Church Missions Team works to inform, educate, and involve church disciples in serving others. We are deeply committed to missions, supporting a wide array of organizations, people, and places with our money and presence. Disciples and friends work together to serve those in need in the greater Richmond area, as well as abroad in places like Haiti, Guatemala, and Honduras. Caring for others is one of our greatest values, and there are opportunities for everyone to participate.
A list of some of the organizations we support is listed below. We hope you’ll find an organization (or a few) you would love to join us in serving. We would be glad to have your help! There are opportunities all year long—some ongoing with big commitments, some just once in a while with small commitments. Whatever time and resources you can share in caring for others are most welcome.
Brandermill Church Contact: Jim Walters
What Brandermill Church Does: Provides temporary shelter and basic daily services during volunteer week, including comfortable sleeping arrangements, showers, laundry, meals, activities, and warm welcoming smiles.
DONATE TO CARITAS (be sure to enter “CARITAS” in the Memo line)
About Caritas:
CARITAS is the largest emergency-shelter provider of homeless services in the Metro Richmond area. Our goal is: “United by our compassion, we help our most vulnerable neighbors break the cycle of addiction and homelessness to reclaim their dignity.”
CARITAS strives to fill the gaps in the homeless services system so that people in crisis can find stability in their lives. Our four programs provide people with the basic life and job skills they need to exit shelter and return to their families, their jobs, their homes and their lives as productive citizens.
- The Emergency S program, hosted by 155 congregations, houses up to 110 people per night, and over 1,000 people annually, providing a safe and hospitable place for our most vulnerable citizens. Each congregation, including the Brandermill Church, provides lunches, hygiene kits, snacks, breakfast foods, daily laundry service, showers, and over-night supervision. Groups and organizations sponsor nightly dinners. Everyone has the opportunity to interact with our guests and serve the local community.
- The Furniture Bank provides essential furniture and household items so that the move from shelter to housing is smoother and less stressful.
- The Works program prepares men to rejoin the work force.
- The Healing Place is a homeless shelter and long-term recovery program for addicted men, which has been nationally recognized as a model that works, with 65% of graduates remaining sober one year after completing the program.
Learn more about the transformational work by coming for a tour, offered every Wednesday at 1:00 PM at 1125 Commerce Road. We have lots of good news to share!
Brandermill Church Contact: Elizabeth Ford
What Brandermill Church Does: Runs a Consignment Sale twice yearly
DONATE TO CONSIGNMENT SALE (be sure to enter “BCCS” in the Memo line)
About the Consignment Sale:
The Brandermill Church Consignment Sale serves two major purposes: the sale is part of the church’s outreach ministries and also serves as a ministry in itself by helping families purchase affordable, gently used clothing, toys and baby items. The twice-yearly sale has grown in the number of consignors, items for sale and the number of shoppers who eagerly wait for the doors to open at 8:00 AM on a Saturday morning. Proceeds from the sale help local charities and families in need, as well as providing a way to recycle our children’s gently used items. The sale is also a lot of FUN and provides a time of fellowship among all the people who volunteer to make the sale the success that it is today! So, consign, volunteer or shop! The sale is open to all members of our community!
Brandermill Church Contact: Charles Hunt
What Brandermill Church Does: Sends a medical mission team to Honduras to provide health care to communities in central Honduras and provides health-care provisions for that team.
DONATE TO FOB (Be sure to write “Friends of Barnabas” in the Memo line)
About Friends of Barnabas:
Founded by a United Methodist minister, the Friends of Barnabas Foundation began in 2000 to “improve the lives of impoverished children in Honduras by providing high quality, sustainable medical care and by enabling communities to become self-sufficient through community health training and education.” From simple mission trips to dispense Vitamin A and anti-parasite medications to children, the trips expanded to include general medicine, eye, and dental clinics to the poor communities in the remote mountain regions of central Honduras.
In order to reach children with medical needs beyond the care that could be provided by traveling mission teams, the Extended Care Program was developed and housed at the Barnabas House, a permanent place of healing established in Pena Blanca. Surgical mission teams were added, focusing on cardiac, oral and maxillofacial, and neurological cases. A full-time clinic was begun. FOB’s staff work diligently alongside a dedicated group of volunteers and missioners to serve the people of Honduras, making the world a little better…one child at a time.
Guatemala Stove-Building Mission Website
Brandermill Church Contact: Nancy Rider
What Brandermill Church Does: Sends a team of 10-12 people to Guatemala each summer to build stoves in homes of Mayan families.
Donate to Guatemala Stove-Building Mission: DONATE
About Guatemala Stove-Building Mission:
The Brandermill Church has been partnering with Highland Support Project since 1996. Our week-long mission trips enable individuals and our congregation to develop relations directly with a community in the Guatemalan Highlands. These trips are designed to be as transformational for the participant as they are for the communities we serve. The purpose of the experience is not to provide free labor in an area with high unemployment, but to act as a key element in fulfilling our mission by developing relationships, witnessing, and being transformed through service. The process used by Highland Support Project develops women’s circles in rural communities, which maintain momentum for education, health, civil participation, and enterprise campaigns. This all begins with the construction of a fuel-efficient indoor cook stove, which eliminates the primary cases of chronic illness, reduces deforestation, and increases the amount of time women have to participate in empowerment activities. Over the years, more than 140 church disciples (members) have participated in this mission and it has changed each life as well as that of The Brandermill Church.
Haiti Outreach Missions Website
Brandermill Church Contact: Jolie Blankenship
What Brandermill Church Does: Sends volunteers for a week in Haiti on a medical mission team; contributes health supplies before a mission team leaves; contributes financially
DONATE TO HAITI OUTREACH MINISTRIES: (Be sure to write “Haiti Outreach Ministries” in the Memo line)
About Haiti Outreach Missions:
The mission of Haiti Outreach Ministries is to share God’s Good News and the love of Christ through evangelism, discipleship, and assisting in meeting the needs of the people of Haiti.
Haiti Outreach Ministries and Mission Communautaire de l’Eglise Chretienne des Cites (MICECC) began with the Church as the foundation and center of its mission. Each Sunday over 4,000 people gather in four church locations to worship, experience and enjoy the presence of God. In Haiti, worship is not about going through the motions. We feel nobody can be in the presence of the Almighty King and stay indifferent!
Our health-care goal is to promote wellness and provide quality health care to the communities surrounding our four churches. Volunteer mission teams serve our medical clinics, meeting the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the people. In addition to treating physical illnesses and providing medications, we provide health and mental health counseling and classes. Our hope is that all who come to us for care will feel His healing touch.
Education in Haiti influences students as well as their families, community, and nation. Many parents come to know Christ by seeing the love and knowledge their children receive through a Christian education. Through our schools, our young people get jobs and help support their families. Women with education are eligible for the better paying jobs traditionally held by men.
Kairos Prison Ministry Website
Brandermill Church Contact: Martin Reid
What Brandermill Church Does: Supports KAIROS teams serving the spiritual needs of resident inmates at Greensville Correctional Center by providing volunteer team members, financial donations and LOTS of cookies.
Donate to Kairos Prison Ministry: DONATE
About Kairos:
Changing Hearts – During the initial Kairos weekend, volunteers serve as God’s instrument through which His love, grace and mercy are expressed to participants/guests in a real and profound way. God begins changing hearts.
Transforming Lives: Following their weekend experience, participants/guests are encouraged to take responsibility for their life choices and their relations with God by engaging in small accountability groups. Kairos volunteers return monthly to provide mentoring and guidance through these accountability groups. It is here that Kairos participants/guests begin to replace old ways of thinking with new, and they learn they are not alone on this journey. They realize there is a hope for a future. The prison environment begins to change; family relationships start to heal… as God transforms lives.
Impacting the World: As the Kairos community inside a prison grows and gains influence, the incidences of violence decreases. Participants who are released re-enter the outside world with a God-centered perspective and focus on becoming productive citizens. Female family members find support, strength and encouragement. Youthful offenders acquire new God-centered values and change their direction in life. Families are reunited with a hope for the future.
Each of the semi-annual weekend retreats costs $3000 and requires 4000 dozen homemade cookies to entice resident inmates to participate. Financial contributions can be made through Brandermill Church or directly to: KAIROS of Virginia, PO Box 182, Woodbridge, Virginia 22194
You may also help support upcoming Kairos Prison Ministry events by baking a few dozen homemade cookies. Just before our Kairos team has a weekend visit, brown bags are provided with instructions and recipes. You can also help by signing up to pray for the ministry HERE. If you have any questions, contact Martin Reid.
Liberation Family Services Website
Brandermill Church Contact: Charles Hunt
What Brandermill Church Does: Cooks and serves dinners to LFS on the first Sunday of every other month from 4:00-8:00 PM.
Donate to Liberation Family Services: DONATE
About Liberation Family Services:
Liberation Family Services (LFS), provides food, shelter and the power to change for individuals in crisis. We offer transitional and rapid-rehousing assistance for single adult males, primarily veterans, supplying the services and support they need to rebuild their lives. Currently, our transitional housing program houses up to 38 men in the program, which we hope to expand in the future.
LFS helps men who are motivated, but lack opportunity. Usually, each veteran just needs a place to sleep, eat and feel safe while improving his situation. LFS provides that boost and connects each man with the necessary tools and resources to get him back on the right track toward self-sufficiency. While at the shelter, residents must remain drug and alcohol free; attend support group meetings, such as AA and NA, if applicable; find and retain employment; attend workshops on life skills; and continue to increase their vocational and educational skills. In the last year, of those residents in the program for six months or longer, 83% moved to permanent housing; 93% were gainfully employed; and 97% were drug and alcohol free at exit time.
Brandermill Church Contact: Dale Gentz
What Brandermill Church Does:
About The Sunday Park Food Pantry:
Brandermill Church Contact: Charles Hunt
What Brandermill Church Does: We have been involved with the Walk-In Ministry for over 30 years, preparing and serving an average of 175 lunches on the third Monday of every other month at Second Presbyterian Church. Volunteers leave Brandermill Church at 10:00 AM and return at 1:00 PM.
Donate to Walk-In Ministry: DONATE
About Walk-In Ministry:
The Walk-In Ministry, a part of the Downtown Community Ministry, provides lunch Monday through Friday at five downtown churches: Second Presbyterian Church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, Centenary United Methodist, St. Peter’s Catholic, and Third Street Bethel AME.
For more than thirty years, Second Presbyterian has provided lunch each Monday. The meal is prepared and served by more than fifty disciples of the church. This hospitality mission includes other volunteer churches – like the Brandermill Church – that alternate in sending teams to Second Presbyterian to prepare and serve the meal for our guests. In addition, some Presbyterian Women’s Groups, other churches, and corporations give financial help as well as food donations. Volunteer opportunities for individuals include registering guests as they arrive, preparing and serving lunch, serving drinks and sharing meals with our guests. The volunteer contact at Second Presbyterian is: Elva Mapp email