East Gainesville
As a church body, First Assembly has not been called only to missions globally, but also locally. Our work and ministry on the East side of Gainesville is centered at Lincoln Middle School, where we meet together in a service each Sunday at 11:15am. Throughout the week, several groups are focused on serving our next door neighbors around the East side.
Lincoln Middle School – God has been very clear with the leadership at First Assembly: we are to bless Lincoln Middle School in whichever ways possible. Whether it is tutoring throughout the week, school development, funding computer labs, or simple landscape maintenance, our heart is to serve the students and administration at Lincoln. If you would like to be involved with Lincoln tutoring, please contact Josh Letts at jletts7@gmail.com.
Eastside High School - For the past year, First Assembly has worked with members of the Eastside High School faculty to coordinate a mentoring program for needy students coming from very difficult backgrounds. This past year, we had over 75 students in the program! The program matches mentors with one student, who they meet with once a week for 30 minutes on the Eastside High campus during the student's scheduled lunch hour. For more information, you can contact Jon Lash at jlash@first-assembly.org
IMPACT – Located just behind Lincoln Middle School, the Carver Gardens neighborhood is an obvious area for us to bring the love of Christ. Several times a week the Impact team offers at-home tutoring, various children’s ministry, and youth discipleship.
Four months ago, we hosted a "Community Forum" in Carver Gardens, where community members were encouraged to come together to share their thoughts and ideas for how we could work together to help improve their community. Out of this meeting, two immediate initiatives were generated:
1) The Carver Gardens community decided that the first project they would like to undertake would be to completely re-do the playground area for the kids, with new playground equipment, mulch, landscaping, etc. We have already raised about $2,000 as a church, and will need approximately $1,000 more to completely finish this project. Community members from Carver Gardens, along with members of our church community, will help provide the labor force to complete this work.
2) After the playground, the Carver Gardens community chose to focus their efforts on constructing a pavilion and community area in the vacant, “back field” of the community. The purpose of this space would be to facilitate positive community interaction and provide an arena for community events, as there are no such spaces now in Carver Gardens. This project will cost an estimated $10,000 to complete, all-inclusive.
If you would like to get involved in any way with Impact, please contact Sebastian Pazmino at sebas.pazmino@gmail.com.