Scope of Outreaches
Proven examples of reaching out to neighbors, building broader community, involving students and other believers in health care.
Neighborhood: Networking with citizens and local agencies seeking solutions to neighborhood problems.
Community: Visibly living out our calling to be peacemakers in a world troubled with strive and violence.
Praying for revival: Locally, nationally, and globally with a special interest in the Middle East and Holy Land.
A Legacy Example of Community Action
Restoration, revitalization, and revival
His Branches has applied the concept of “thinking globally and acting locally” to the mobilization of spiritual, interpersonal, and material resources in Rochester since its establishment in the late 1970s.
In the words of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Our conviction is that unless the Kingdom of God becomes more and more manifest in our midst, we will suffer a progressive demise in the form of deteriorating health, well-being, relationships, politics, and ultimately eternal separation from our Creator.
Simply stated, “the Kingdom of God” is a social condition in which people have reached the end of living for themselves in the moment and have chosen to lead joyful and purposeful lives together in community under the leadership of a loving and forgiving God. In this sense, we’ve been praying for revival and working for “hope, healing, and restoration” in our own lives, families, neighborhoods, and broader community for decades. It’s our version of the old battle formula: “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
Connecting our neighborhood with Foodlink
Locally, the Arnett Block Association works collaboratively with concerned neighbors, police officers, building inspectors, and other local agencies in the 19th Ward area near Arnett Blvd. to improve the safety of our streets and develop a greater sense of community. We reach across to the libraries, schools, and civic organizations in our neighborhood with personal encouragement and material assistance. Others are engaged in similar efforts across town at the Gerhardt Neighborhood Outreach Center and throughout Rochester in increasingly numerous and exemplary ways.
On a broader community-wide basis we’ve been involved in a number of peacemaking activities with like-minded citizens by hosting a very successful gun buyback and most recently by participating in the creation of a compelling anti gun violence video, The Front Row, that reaches across to at-risk youth with a message of warning and hope. We’ve also been actively involved over the years in doing other youth outreach and mobilizing ongoing support for health care professionals in training and practice who share our hope for a redeemed future.
We intercede, yearn, and prayerfully envision a time when men and women of good faith, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, will come together and rise up in our community as one body, opening wide the gates of heaven for an outpouring of God’s grace. Please join us as we seek to see a movement of God’s spirit, followed by the movement of His people and the release of the resources we so earnestly need.
Click here or on our logo above to visit our legacy community website and see more background information about the community outreach programs at His Branches under Dr. Morehouse’s leadership. As examples of the kind of archived information available you might want to review descriptive outlines of the neighborhood, community-wide, or intercessory prayer initiatives that we developed. Or click here to see how His Branches is currently sponsoring community action projects.
