“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” (Matthew 25:40)
We believe that Christ called us to serve. On this page, you’ll find ways that we are working with mission partners locally, regionally and internationally to share the gospel and help those who are in need. Visit our Serve Now page to learn about our monthly mission focus.
We are a community of faith, hope, and love
helping our neighbors, the next generation, and the nations
take their next steps with Jesus.
We are so grateful for your generosity and service to others. Check out our Mission Impact Report to learn about the impact our church family had on the community and around the globe in 2023.
We encourage you to give of your time, talents, and energy. If you would like to find a place to serve in the church or community, please email Outreach Director Maggie Brannon.
Helping Our Neighbors
Disaster Response Team
Contact Mike Derrick
In James 2:14-26, James writes that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, God fills us with His love to the point it overflows, and we are compelled by His love to share that love to the world. Through the Disaster Response Ministry, we can share this love and to be Christ’s helping hands for those whose worlds have been turned upside down by major weather events. A Disaster Response Team (DRT) helps homeowners following hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. Work often involves de-mucking homes, clearing debris, cutting and removing trees, tarping roofs and even rebuilding homes.
DRTs don’t just help to physically put homes back in order. They help people cope emotionally with the aftermath of a life-altering tragedy. Many times, teams arrive to find the homeowners in various stages of grief or loss. As part of the Early Response Team (ERT) training team members receive, they learn skills to help the homeowners walk through their crisis.
Alpharetta Methodist’s Disaster Response Ministry has sent teams all over the southeast, from Louisiana to Kentucky to Florida, and helped hundreds of families begin putting their lives back together.
Each DRT is comprised of volunteers from the church and from across North Georgia.
While the work can be physically demanding, there are several roles, especially on overnight teams, that are critical but not that physically strenuous. Examples include base camp managers, cooks and work site evaluation specialists. We’re actively looking for volunteers who want to take on these roles as part of the team.
Blanket Ministry
Contact Linda Sokowoski
The Blanket Ministry volunteers meet:
Tuesdays
9-11 a.m. and 6-8 p.m.
Rooms 267, 269 and 270
Volunteers create handmade blankets for those in need of comfort. A label stitched on each blanket describes how it was crafted with love and that prayers are being lifted for whoever is wrapped in the blanket. Want to give a blanket to someone who is ill or going through difficult times? Look for baskets of blankets located throughout the church.
A Beacon of Hope
Contact Maggie Brannon
A Beacon of Hope works to serve neighbors and the next generation by meeting women where they are and walking with them through pregnancy, the first few years of their child’s life and, in some cases, providing post abortion care.
Drake House
Contact Maggie Brannon
Drake House provides affordable housing to single women and mothers.
Volunteer opportunities include:
- Mentoring a mom or child
- Cleaning and restocking the apartment when a family moves out
- Bringing a meal to the family in the apartment
- Sponsoring a family at Christmas
- Serving at the Drake Closet, an upscale retail consignment store, working on the sales floor, helping staff with private events, and organizing and straightening merchandise
English as a Second Language
Contact Lynn Sickeler to arrange for tutoring or to volunteer as a tutor.
English as a Second Language classes are available for adults for whom English is not their native tongue. Tutors provide one-on-one help to students, helping them develop their skills at speaking, writing, reading and understanding the English language.
Family Promise
Contact Lisa Derrick
Family Promise helps local families who are experiencing temporary homelessness by providing them with shelter and support so they can find income and housing. We host families for Family Promise approximately once a quarter. Opportunities are available during each hosting period to provide food, serve as an overnight host, help families move in and out, and clean laundry after move-out day.
InCommunity
Contact Maggie Brannon
InCommunity provides services to adults with developmental disabilities.
Volunteer opportunities include: Landscaping and yard maintenance, host parties at the homes on holidays, spend time at the day center with residents, and organize fun activities at the homes.
Habitat for Humanity
Contact Jack Spicer
Habitat for Humanity works to build and renovate houses for people in need.
Builds are typically scheduled December through February.
HomeStretch
Contact Maggie Brannon
HomeStretch helps local homeless families by providing short-term transitional housing and an individualized support program of mentoring, money management and life skills development.
Volunteer opportunities include administrative work, professional work (legal, tax, medical); repairing, repainting or remodeling apartment(s); landscaping and yard maintenance; moving furniture, cleaning and preparing apartments for a new family move-ins; financial or family mentoring; academic tutoring; and conducting LifeSkills education workshops and job coaching.
Meals on Wheels
Contact Heather Dean
We provide homecooked meals on holidays for homebound members of our congregation and for seniors who are receiving services from North Fulton Senior Services.
Volunteers are needed to provide and deliver meals for seniors (approximately 10-15 meals) on holidays when Meals on Wheels is not open. These meals don’t have to be homemade. Addresses and guidelines will be provided. Volunteers are needed on the following holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.
North Fulton Community Charities
Contact Maggie Brannon
North Fulton Community Charities (NFCC) provides support for persons living in the North Fulton area by supplying help with rent, utilities, transportation, food, clothing, medicine and other basic needs, during times of need.
Volunteer opportunities include working in the food pantry or thrift store, creating various kits according to a pre-approved NFCC list, volunteering in the education program, and picking up donated food items from local businesses to deliver to NFCC.
Helping the Next Generation
Backpacks of Love
Contact Jeanne Hunt or Jo Lynn McCrossan
Drop off food donations in the red bins
under the portico at the church’s Cumming St. entrance,
8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays during the year.
Every other week during the school year, Backpacks of Love sends backpacks filled with food home with students whose families are at risk of hunger. The program has grown to serve more than 122 families.
Upcoming 2023-24 School Year Collection Dates:
- March 20
- April 3 and 17
- May 1 and 15
Individual or microwaveable servings or cans with pop tops are most useable. Up to 50% of Backpacks of Love recipients are homeless and don’t have access to a can opener or stovetop.
You can help most efficiently by donating multiples of a single item (cases are great!), rather than filling a bag with one of each item on the shopping list. Drop off your donations in plastic recyclable grocery store bags.
Needed food items:
- Protein: Large cans of tuna or chicken, small plastic jars of peanut butter
- Fruit: Canned mandarin oranges, fruit cocktail, canned peaches
- Vegetables: Corn (green veggies aren’t their favorite)
- Microwaveable items: Macaroni and cheese, single-serve dinners, soup (no creamed soups)
- Pasta: Canned pasta with sauce
- Breakfast/snacks: Protein or granola bars, single-serve cereal boxes, pop tarts
- Please do not include glass or perishable items
Mighty Mentes
Contact Maggie Brannon
Mighty Mentes is a mentoring and tutoring program for students at Vickery Mill Elementary School. Opportunities are available to tutor students one-on-one.
Buddy Bag Ministry
To volunteer, contact Pamela Schiftic.
If you know of a child in crisis who needs a Buddy Bag, please contact Mary Morgan or call the church office (770-475-5576).
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)
A Buddy Bag is a canvas bag containing a handmade Teddy bear, a blanket sewn by our Blanket Ministry, a book, crayons, drawing paper in a pocket folder and an activity/coloring book. The Buddy Bag Ministry shares the love of Christ with children (infant-teens), by providing the bags to comfort them in the midst of a crisis, like family distress, a fire or hospitalization.
Buddy Bag Ministry needs:
- Crayons – 16 or 24 count
- Pocket folders (no metal brads)
- White copy paper (8 1/2″ x 11″)
- Construction paper (8 1/2″ x 11″)
- Coloring books
- Books — new or gently used, especially for middle and high school age
Buddy Bags exist because of your generosity. Financial contributions to purchase supplies are appreciated. Please make checks to Alpharetta First Methodist and write “Buddy Bags” on the memo line.
Buddy Bag Ministry needs:
- Crayons – 16 or 24 count
- Pocket folders (no metal brads)
- White copy paper (8 1/2″ x 11″)
- Construction paper (8 1/2″ x 11″)
- Coloring books
- Books — new or gently used, especially for middle and high school age
Financial contributions to purchase supplies are appreciated. Please make checks to Alpharetta First Methodist and write “Buddy Bags” on the memo line.
Dream Weavers
Contact Fred Moeller
Dream Weavers is dedicated to making the transition into foster care less stressful on for children.
Volunteer opportunities: Sort and organize the clothing closet and donations, make meals for foster families, volunteer at one of the annual respite days, assemble gift baskets for various holidays, participate in the Christmas Dreams Toy Drive and sponsor a child for Christmas, organize a toy drive, diaper drive or basic needs drive, help wrap Christmas presents, and tutor a child at the Kalen Center.
Manning Oaks Elementary School
Contact Maggie Brannon
Manning Oaks Elementary School is our closest neighboring school, located just down Cumming Street from the church campus. We support the school and families of students in various ways throughout the school year.
An ongoing volunteer opportunity is reading to kindergarten and 1st graders.
Tiny Stitches
2nd Thursday of each month
10 a.m.-12 p.m.
Contact Faye Mullas
Tiny Stitches is a nonprofit ministry that sews, knits and crochets items for infants and preemies born into poverty in Georgia. The ministry provides basic layettes for disadvantaged families and burial ensembles for families who suffer the loss of an infant, regardless of financial status. Sewn items include gowns, sleepers, lap-front shirts, receiving blankets, crib quilts, creepers, washcloths, bibs, burp cloths and tote bags. Knitted and crocheted items include caps, bonnets, blankets, booties, sacques and sweaters.
Sewing supplies and yarn are available free of charge to volunteers at the workshops. Everyone who is able to sew, knit or crochet — or who would like to learn these skills — is welcome.
Helping the Nations
Honduras
Contact Brian Wheeler
We have a partnership with Honduras Outreach Inc. to help provide skilled nursing care to remote clinics by supporting a registered nurse’s salary.
Ecuador
Contact Maggie Brannon
Alpharetta Methodist partners with the Dunamis Foundation in Quito, Ecuador, provides support and opportunities for restoration, healing and societal reintegration for young girls and women who have been sexual abused. Dunamis provides support to the girls and women physically, emotionally and spiritually, understanding that true healing only comes through the love of Jesus Christ.
Student Mission Trip to Assist Jungle Kids for Christ
Our Student Ministry sends a mission team into the jungles of Ecuador every summer to work alongside Jungle Kids for Christ. JKC empowers children so they can break the cycle of poverty and abuse and share a message of transformation with their family, community, country, and world.
Nicaragua
Family Mission trip to Nicaragua
June 15-22
This is a great opportunity to introduce your children to the beauty of serving others and to introduce them to a new culture. We will be traveling and working with Amigos for Christ.
This trip is open to families within the church. (Children must be at least 5 years old.) The cost will be $350 plus airfare. Each family will be responsible for booking their own flights with guidance from our Missions team about what flights will work best for travel days.
Limited to 20 participants. This trip will include a good bit of manual labor and housing will be in dorm-like setting and communal bathroom set up.
Operation Christmas Child
Every fall, we support Operation Christmas Child, a project of the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. Operation Christmas Child’s mission is to deliver shoeboxes filled with small toys, hygiene items and other gifts to impoverished children around the world. Our church family fills shoeboxes and delivers them to the regional OCC distribution center.
Contact Maggie Brannon to help.
Paraguay
Contact Maggie Brannon
We support missionaries Christian and Angelica Dickson and the work they are doing in Yrybucuá, Paraguay. Contact Maggie Brannon if you’re interested in learning about how you can get involved.
Russia
Contact Maggie Brannon
We support a missionary who is a United Methodist Church pastor involved in local church ministry, including church planting and evangelism.
The UK
Contact Maggie Brannon
We support a refugee worker in the United Kingdom (and his family) who develops relationships with refugees, helps them connect to the local community, teaches them English, and helps them establish a relationship with Christ.
Mission Trip to the UK
Late September or early October
This trip will be limited to 3-8 people. Due to the nature of the work we will be doing, participants must be mature in their faith and at least 18 years old. This trip will be physically demanding with lots of walking. The cost will be $1,500-$2,000.
Have questions about missions or how you can serve? Contact Director of Outreach Maggie Brannon.