Care

The second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

The Bible warns us that if our neighbor is in need and we bless them without doing anything about their needs, then we have not loved them. (James 2:15-16)

Our church is not an entity unto itself but is a community of Christians who love God and our neighbors.  We believe that caring for others is what being a Christian is all about, and we are always seeking opportunities for our members to help their brothers and sisters locally, and around the world.

Habitat for Humanity – Gilwood supports Habitat financially, and often participate in building projects.

CCM food collection – Each month in the newsletter various dry goods or other household items are featured. We leave our donations in the shopping cart in the Commons Area. There is another cart in our fellowship hall. Food is taken monthly to CCM (Cabarrus Cooperative Ministry).

CVAN – We support CVAN financially as well as in other ways when opportunities arise. In 2003 we scraped and painted an entire house for them, with about 30 members participating, in Project GASP (Gilwood Association for Scraping & Painting).

Local High Schools – Gilwood provides financial resources to the Northwest Cabarrus High School Bible Association and the Cox Mill High School Bible Association, which allows Bible classes to be taught in these local high schools.

Hospice – We also provide financial resources to Hospice and have participated in several projects to benefit their support programs. One memorable project was the collection of teddy bears in Vacation Bible School in 2009 to be used in grief counseling with children.

The Presbytery of Charlotte Community Disaster Response Team

Currently Gilwood Presbyterian Church has four members that are part of The Presbytery of Charlotte Community Disaster Response Team.  The mission of this team is “To provide opportunities to serve and support our church community’s response to disaster”.  This team was formed in 1999 after Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina.

The Community Disaster Response Team has three (3) ministries:

• Trailer Ministry-supply trailers for church collection drives/medical and shower trailers for disasters.
• Transportation-move food, medical and disaster supplies for local and national non-profit agencies.
• Mission Work Trips-sponsor, lead and support teams working in local, state and national relief areas.

The CDRT is continuing its “Clean-up Buckets” drive and relocates the buckets to needed areas. Gilwood has been involved in the inventorying of these buckets and completed about 400 of these inventories last year.

Another part of the work of this team is building shower buildings for disaster response.  Gilwood team members were instrumental in completing the first of these shower buildings.  They have also helped in relocating these buildings to churches in several areas.  These buildings are used at churches that have volunteers working in disaster areas.  Funding for completing these buildings is provided by

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  Churches just provide the man power to complete the project.

Members of the team also make a pickup of donated items from Bed Bath and Beyond every Friday.  These are stored and sent to areas that are in need.  Three of Gilwood members took a 53 foot trailer full of these items to Florida in June of 2019.  Gilwood Presbyterian Church members helped with the loading of this trailer to go to Florida

Crop Walk – World Wide Hunger Relief

Crop Walk benefits the hungry around the world and a large portion of the funds raised (25% last year) remain in the local community. It is usually a great afternoon to walk for a good cause. Anybody can participate in the walk. We usually have a number of our youth participating. This is a yearly event, usually the first or second Sunday in October.

Mission Trips 

In recent years Gilwood has sponsored fully-funded mission trips to El Salvador, West Virginia, and the Gulf Coast for members who felt called to participate.