Adult Education Classes: Sundays at 9:40 AM in Commons 1, masks required
September 12: The Iona Community and Iona Abbey Pilgrimage
Iona Community leader Ruth Harvey will Zoom to Hope Church live from Scotland’s Isle of Iona, introducing the Iona Community’s history, mission (peace/justice/worship renewal), and current activities. Dede Johnston will describe her multiple Abbey sojourns with Hope students. Jill Russell will introduce the possibility of a Hope Church pilgrimage to Iona. David Myers, who has visited Iona 30+ times, will illustrate the travel and the Scotland setting.
September 19: Food Club: An Innovative Approach to Increasing Healthy Food Access
Traditional food support has relied on a patchwork of emergency-oriented programs no longer matched to our community’s needs and trends. To meet our community’s needs, Community Action House has planned to evolve its service model from a food pantry into a Food Club. Successfully piloted in Grand Rapids, this membership-based, grocery-store style experience is an innovative, high-dignity approach to improving healthy food access. Partially financed through sliding-scale membership fees, the Food Club model enhances consumer choice, member participation, and access to healthy foods. Food Club will create the capacity to efficiently serve thousands more community members each month and dramatically improve our region’s ability to address food insecurity. The long effort to bring the Food Club model to the lakeshore is now in its final stages, and this new approach to food access and social services delivery is set to open this coming October. Executive Director Scott Rumpsa will introduce us to the Food Club.
September 26, October 3, October 10: Effective Altruism Series
This three-week series will explore ideas for more effective charitable giving and for “impact investing” that enables investors to do good while doing well. Come and consider ideas for “doing good better.”
- September 26: Making a Difference with Effective Altruism: Holland radiologist, Jason Dykstra — a subject of a Washington Post article on “The Rise of the Rational Do-Gooders” — will describe the faith-based choices his family has made about giving, and a simple evidence-based process for discovering highly cost-effective alternative giving possibilities.
- October 3: Kim Tan Live from London: Jubilee & Social Justice: Biotech entrepreneur-turned-impact-investor, Kim Tan, will Zoom to Hope Church to explore the implications of biblical jubilee principles for the church, our lives, business, and society. He will illustrate how he is walking the talk with ventures in developing countries enabled by his social impact investment funds.
- October 10: Effective Altruism in Holland-Zeeland: The Community Foundation of the Holland/Zeeland Area works with donors and nonprofit partners to enable a thriving community for all. Executive Director Mike Goorhouse and Director of Community Impact Yah-Hanna Jenkins Leys will join us to share CFHZ’s approach to creating maximum impact with its endowment resources, and what they’ve learned from supporting hundreds of local individuals, families and companies as they developed their unique approach to philanthropic stewardship.