The following are programs, organizations, and ministries that DPC has chosen to support. God's work is being done in the community and world through the church and various service organizations.
Aid for Friends
The Aid for Friends program enables shut-ins to remain in their homes by providing food, friendship, emergency aid, and advocacy. Over 250 meals are prepared at DPC each month. The meals are packed on the third Tuesday of each month at 10 a.m. - new time! in the Andrews Hall kitchen. Volunteers are always needed to prepare and/or pack meals. For more information or to volunteer, contact the church office (215-348-3531).
Americans for Native Americans (ANA)
In a nation so abundant with riches, it is often hard for some Americans to imagine the tragic hardships facing many Native Americans. With many lacking basic necessities, the living conditions on Native American reservations can be shocking to those not familiar with reservation life. Native Americans deal with frightening statistics every day. Rampant poverty, high homelessness, sub-standard housing without running water, heat or electricity, extremely high unemployment and a very low high school graduation rate (under 70%).
Bread for the World
Bread for the World works to encourage government policies to provide programs to aid hungry people. As a covenant member, DPC schedules annual Offerings of Letters to encourage legislators to work on alleviating hunger, here and around the world.
Bridging the Gap
Bridging the Gap is a ministry that involves work groups going to Africa and building rope bridges that allow residents to walk safely from where they live to areas where they can work or get food and supplies. This particular region is a series of peninsulas with dangerous rivers that separate the small towns. Lives are lost as people attempt to cross these treacherous rivers when there are no bridges.
Christmas Joy Offering
The Christmas Joy Offering is a Presbyterian Church (USA) offering. Fifty percent of the receipts to the Christmas Joy Offering are distributed to the Board of Pensions for assistance programs that provide support to retired and active church workers and their spouses and families. The other fifty percent supports Presbyterian-related racial ethnic education through the General Assembly Council.
Discovery Service Project
Discovery Service Project works to provide buildings for healing, teaching, training, or worship for communities in need in the Third World. Many DPC members have participated in their annual work trips. Led by the Reverends Rowland and Barbara Carlson, Bucks County's Humanitarians for 2000, Discovery has been building bridges between cultures since 1987.
Central Bucks Ambulance & Rescue Unit
This contribution is made in recognition of the service this organization provides to the community and DPC whenever this service is needed.
Doylestown Emergency Shelter
The Bucks County Housing Group has run the Doylestown Emergency Shelter, providing temporary and emergency housing for families, since 1984. The staff offers counseling to assist the occupants in finding permanent lodging and making use of appropriate community resources available to them.
Doylestown Fire Company
Each year members of our community are touched by the devastation of a fire. Others put their lives on the line to fight these fires. This contribution is made in recognition of the service this organization provides to the community and to DPC.
DPC's Deacon Fund
The Mission committee allocates funds used by the Deacons to carry out its ministry, which includes visiting residence-bound members, creating CDs of worship services, preparing college cookie mailings, and working to address other needs of the congregation.
DPC ROCKmen
DPC ROCKmen (Rehabilitating Our Camp Kirkwood) are a dedicated group of men who are committed to the Kirkwood Camp, its programs and facilities. The ROCKmen have built and refurbished cabins and other facilities at the camp, ensuring that the structures are safe and "camp-comfortable.” They also participate in grounds work at the camp.
DPC Youth Mission Trips
These funds offset service trips/projects intended to involve youth and adults in the needs of the homeless and others. Individuals study and address various needs through their work in soup kitchens, shelters, food banks, housing rehabilitation, as well as their exposure to people and services in a variety of settings.
Emmanuel Healthcare
Emmanuel Healthcare is an independent association of hospitals with membership in the Christian Medical Association of India. The headquarters of EH is in New Dehli, but EH’s 18 community health projects are located throughout north India. EH is the world’s largest indigenous healthcare mission. EH is a fellowship of Christian institutions and individuals that exist to transform communities through caring, with primary emphasis on the poor and marginalized. EH serves people and communities regardless of race, caste, creed, or religion in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ, so as to manifest him through word and deed. Today this dynamic, thriving healthcare mission agency has become the benchmark, not only for India but also for many other parts of the developing world.
Esperanza
The primary work of Esperanza ("hope" in Spanish) is the operation of a community health care clinic to treat and prevent injury and disease. It has a full-time board-certified staff of bilingual physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants specializing in cardiology, pediatrics, women's health, family medicine, internal medicine, and infectious diseases. Health Partners, Inc., has deemed Esperanza a "Center of Excellence" for the diagnosis and treatment of HIV/AIDS. Because the majority of its medical staff is bilingual, the patients feel very comfortable there. No one is denied care because of his or her inability to pay.
FISH
FISH is a volunteer organization which provides emergency needs such as food, heating oil, shelter, clothing, and transportation. As the need arises, the Mission committee collects non-perishable food for the FISH community collection point for distribution. In addition to congregational sponsorship, individuals can contribute directly.
Food Larder Collection
Donations of food, cleaning supplies and personal products are accepted the first Sunday of each month in the entrance to Andrews Hall. The items are given to the New Britain Food Larder. The items that are most needed are peanut butter, jelly, canned main dish meals, hearty soups, and canned fruits.
Habitat for Humanity of Bucks County
In 1994, DPC reaffirmed its covenant to support Habitat for Humanity International and its local Bucks County affiliate. Habitat is an ecumenical Christian housing ministry whose objective is to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the face of the earth by working in partnership with God's people in need.
Heifer International
For fifty years, Heifer International has been sending farm animals to impoverished and war-torn countries whose farmers are in desperate need. Farmers receiving animals receive training on care and must then commit to give their first-born animals to another deserving family. DPC has donated several arks full of animals to Heifer International and supports Heifer through the Alternative Giving program during Advent each year.
Karen Families
DPC supports two families who came to us from a refugee camp in Thailand after leaving their home in Burma. The support provided includes child care, literacy training, help with acclimating to a new country, financial support for housing and related costs, and transportation for medical visits and shopping trips.
KIYA
KIYA is an organization in Peru that does outreach to children who have been abused or neglected, often because of disability, and provides them with safe housing and meets their basic educational and emotional needs. They also work to raise funds to provide specialized medical attention when needed in this poverty-stricken area.
Life Abundant
This vital ministry to those in prison and their families provides volunteers for worship services, tutorial programs, Bible study, counseling, and support. A firm belief that conversion is vital to an effective rehabilitation program guides this organization's work.
Love in Action
This program provides opportunities for members to respond to needs within our congregation and the community. People are encouraged to bring needs of families or individuals to the attention of the congregation. People may do this by 1) completing a "Needs of the People" form in the pews and placing it in the offering plate or mailing it to the church office; 2) presenting the need during the Concerns of the Church during the Sunday worship service; or 3) contacting the church office.
Missionary Support
One Great Hour of Sharing
Each year, DPC supports One Great Hour of Sharing by involving the congregation in financial contributions over and above the annual Mission budget. All money contributed goes toward the hunger program of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Self-Development of People, and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.
Pastors' Emergency Fund for Food and Housing
The Mission committee sets aside an amount each year for pastors to use in a discretionary way to meet emergency needs that come to them from the community. When transient and homeless people who are in need of food or overnight lodging appeal to the church, the pastors are able to meet these immediate requests for aid.
Peacemaking Offering
The Peacemaking Offering is a special offering received on World Communion Sunday in October. Seventy-five percent of this offering is given to the Peacemaking Task Force of the General Assembly and twenty-five percent remains for use by DPC for community projects and ministries.
Red Cross Emergency Shelter
The American Red Cross, Lower Bucks County Chapter, operates a 75-bed emergency shelter program which provides short-term assistance to homeless individuals and families in Bucks County. Shelter residents receive meals, a cot, linens, shower facilities, and personal hygiene items. Social casework management is provided for all shelter residents on-site. These services include assessment, development of a plan to resolve the residents' homelessness, support, referral to appropriate community services, monitoring of progress, advocacy, and counseling. Workshops on parenting, budgeting, nutrition, self-esteem building, job interviewing, and career direction are offered weekly. The hot-line is 800-810-4434.
SNEHA
The Society for Nurture, Education and Health Advancement (SNEHA) works actively with the poorest of the poor among the Dalits in the slums of Khurbura, India. The program includes a school for children, community health education, and a subsidized visiting clinic. Funds will be used to provide scholarships for children, community health education, and medical care for those who cannot afford to pay.
Sunset Gap Community Center Clothing Drive
Each spring DPC members collect clothing for the thrift shop of the Sunset Gap Community Center in Newport, Tennessee, usually amounting to over five tons. DPC is one of the largest contributors to the thrift shop.
The Other Carpenter
Theological Education Fund
The base of funding for some seminaries has declined drastically. The goal of this fund is for every congregation to contribute 1% of its operating budget to further the work of our seminaries in training future pastors and church workers.
Tobe Turpin Project
VITA Education Services, Inc.
VITA provides trained tutors to teach basic reading skills to adults on a one-to-one basis. VITA teaches problem-solving techniques and decision-making to young adults in trouble with the law, and tutors persons in English as a second language. DPC also supports VITA by giving it space in which to hold classes.
Wrapping Presence
Winner of the 2004 Pennsylvania Volunteer Group of the Year Award, this program visits nursing homes and lets residents "shop" for gifts to offer loved ones. DPC's Marne Dietterich, a social worker by training, watched her parents spend their last—often frustrating—Christmas seasons in a nursing home, their desire to get in on the gift-giving stymied by immobility and illness. She now devotes her considerable energies to remedying that predicament for other nursing home residents as founder and guiding force behind Wrapping Presence, an outreach program affiliated with our church. Marne and her army of 130 ecumenical volunteers, ages 5 to 81, turn area nursing homes into veritable North Poles every year. Because of them, residents can shop on-site, wrap, and reminisce. There are volunteers who shop in advance for gifts to be "sold." There are buddies to help each resident select and wrap. There are picture-takers, pinecone-corsage makers, and home cookie-bakers. All sore merchandise has been donated—or purchased with donations—so the gifts are free. Those who insist on paying will be "charged" one smile, maybe, or two hugs.
Mission Efforts