Missions and Outreach are important and essential components of our Christian faith. Over the years we have been involved in a number of outreach initiatives to help those in need in our community, our county, our country, and the world. Some of our many projects include:
Maker’s Place
The Maker’s Place is a diaper bank and Hope Center sponsored by United Methodists of Greater New Jersey. The Maker’s Place was launched in July 2018 with a broad vision: to become a resource center that connects neighbors with neighbors in diverse and inclusive community, by responding to the gifts and aspirations of people living in poverty. 
The past couple of years, we have donated close to 2,000 diapers to Maker’s place and our local Starfish food pantry.
The winter of 2023 diaper drive brought in 2060 diapers for adults and babies that were donated to Readington Social Services (Starfish).
Family Promise
Family Promise of Hunterdon County ministers to the needs of low-income and homeless families and women by providing temporary housing, meals, and other physical needs through a network of committed congregations throughout the county. In the past, we provided dinners several times during the year to guests when they stayed at the nearby Rockaway Reformed Church. We also supply clothes, supplies and food on an as-needed basis. The past two years were particularly hard for Family Promise. Due to Covid, families were housed in hotels instead of churches. This raised their costs significantly and when an apartment fire in Flemington caused many families to be homeless, an outreach to local churches for monetary donations was made. WUMC donated $500.00 in 2021, and $250.00 in 2022. This was dedicated Missions funds previously raised by car washes, sub sales, and crafts.
Starfish Food Pantry
Several times throughout the year we take up collections of food to donate to the Readington Starfish Food Pantry, which distributes food to needy families in the community. At Christmas we adopt families to make sure everyone has a gift to open. In February, 2020 the SuperBowl challenge brought in almost 1,000 canned and non perishable food items. We held several drive by food drives when the church was closed due to CoVid. In 2021 and 2022 community wide clothing drives were held and hundreds of dollars were donated to Starfish from the proceeds of these drives. For more information on Starfish, visit their Facebook page or Readington’s Social Services page.
CROP Hunger Walk
CROP stands for “Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty.” CROP Hunger walks are community-wide events sponsored by Church World Service and organized by local volunteers to raise funds to end hunger. Every year church members walk in this annual fundraiser to help ease hunger and poverty both locally and internationally.
Mission Trips
Members of the church have gone on several mission trips to help those in need. A team of volunteers has made several trips to New Orleans to help Hurricane Katrina victims as part of the St. Bernard Project. The volunteers lent their construction skills to build and repair homes that will house the area homeless.
Volunteers have also made several trips to West Virginia to work with Wellspring of Greenbrier County to help needy families improve their homes, including electrical work and the building of wheelchair ramps.
A team of youth and adult volunteers have made several trips to Sussex County, NJ, through the Christian Outreach Project to help needy families with home repairs.
The summer of 2021 we are working close to home on a backyard project for someone in our local community. We look forward to helping others in our community as needed. Please reach out to Pastor Dianna if you have any questions about this mission.
Other Outreach Programs
We are a longtime supporter of ChildFund International – we sponsor a young boy, Luis, who lives in India. We also support the Red Bird Mission of Kentucky, which collects supplies that are distributed to people in need in Appalachia. Every Communion Sunday we take up a special collection which is given to a different charitable cause each month.
Missions Festival/Alternate Christmas Giving
In October 2016 and 2017 over $7,500.00 was raised for the following groups during a missions festival: Christian Outreach Project (COP), AICF, Church World Service, CUMAC, Family Promise, Good News Home for Women, Heifer, Market Street Mission, Ramabai Mukti, Red Bird, UMCOR, Wellspring, and Servv. Many of these non-profits take donations directly on their websites. Servv has great handmade gift ideas you can order for yourself, or loved ones.
2020-2021
Since March of 2020, we were challenged to find new ways to continue our missions. While we didn’t have many inside Sunday services, our congregation still participated in giving. We held many drive-by food donations to benefit Starfish, diaper drives, and clothing drives. We were still able to collect gifts for those less fortunate in our local community for Christmas.
August of 2021 we held a car wash that raised funds to benefit our next backyard or home project mission. 
As part of their confirmation project, our confirmands advocated for the following non-profit organizations and raised hundreds of dollars for Meals on Wheels, Christian Outreach Project, UMCOR, and Child Fund.
2022
This year, as we got back to regular services, we brought back our communion offerings on Sundays. Most of these dedicated funds were donated to UMCOR for assistance in the Ukraine, hurricane relief, and other natural disasters. Approximately $1850.00 was raised for UMCOR this year, as well as our congregation generously donated to other Missions projects throughout the year.
As you can see, we are a very busy and giving church community!