Cooking With Kindness is a youth-inspired ministry to help essential personnel in our LAUMC community feel loved and cared for by providing them with a ready-to-serve dish. The cooking will be done at LAUMC by the youth under the supervision of caring adults. The dish will be delivered with a sticker containing our logo and Bible verses along with a personalized message of hope and compassion written by the youth who prepared it.
Inspire Productions is a video production studio ministry welcoming youth to reflect their God-given gifts while developing positive content and good news to share online. We are motivated by 1 Peter 4:10, which says, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (NIV). Inspire Productions will cultivate youth expertise in tech, communication, and creativity, giving youth space to produce content that celebrates their interests and voices their vision. Youth will consider their own ideas, LAUMC, and their local communities as sources of inspiration for a variety of productions. Later, Inspire Productions will expand to clients outside LAUMC, including nonprofits and others with positive stories waiting to be told.
Spark Connection will offer individuals the opportunity to Name, Claim, and Sustain their Spark and become a Spark Champion for others, as we form small groups of people of all ages who share a spark. Sparks include skills and talents (e.g., music, art, drama, writing, athletics), commitment (e.g., social justice, environmentalism, animal rights, activism), and quality (e.g., great listening, effective leadership). Spark Connection is also a great way for young people and adults to share their Sparks and combine them to make God’s world a better place.
Pastor Digital Media Kits aims to enable 5,000 pastors to reach their congregations online, especially those who are struggling to get online during the pandemic. We will start by providing simple, clear instructions to assemble the necessary equipment from a carefully curated list of products, as well as guides on how to produce an online service. After helping the first few pastors, we will learn more about their needs, refining our approach and growing a supportive community in the process. Inspired by Jesus feeding 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish in John 6:1-14, we want to grow this ministry into a self-sustaining, vibrant, online network of pastors and congregations working together to reinvent how church does church online.