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The “GNU” team (GNU=Giving to Needs Unmet) formed out of a desire to channel our church's giving in a relational way. We desire to give of our resources--our time, our money, and our skills--to meet the needs of those we come in contact with.

For about 5 years now, our church has chosen to center one Sunday service a month (dubbed "Service Worship," an inversion of the usual "worship service") to give feet to our faith. This arose from a desire to do more, and talk less, about serving others as a faith community. Many of our Service Worship projects are drawn from suggestions from members of Common Table based on the needs of people around them.

Some of our projects have included volunteering with Fairfax Area Christian Emergency & Transitional Services (FACETS), the Reston Interfaith Network, FreeAlert, and Compassionate Action. More recently we have been including service opportunities with those closer to our personal circles of need, as well. Thus, our recent projects have included cooking and packaging quick, frozen dinners for battered women’s shelters in the DC area, preparing meals for the homeless, laying new flooring for a family whose original flooring was causing allergy problems, re-landscaped part of a yard for a recently widowed co-worker to make maintenance easier, and several moving projects.

For the past two years, we have financially and physically sponsored a refugee family who arrived in our country with no community connections, no employment, and little income. We have attempted to help the family navigate some of the headaches of dealing with a new country, such as enrolling in schools and finding jobs. We are now involved in other projects sharing fellowship and job skills with other recent immigrants and refugees.

GNU TEAM TASKS:

1) The GNU Team comes up with our once-per-month “service worship” projects.

2) Another task of the GNU team is to help monitor and ensure that a decent portion of our church resources (both finances and time) go to those less fortunate than us. Because we have no mortgage, building, major property or other administrative overhead, we have at times been able to give away 50% of our entire savings and income for prolonged periods of time, thus fulfilling a strong heart's desire among us to put the least of these first.

Here are a some additional GNU team resources: