St. James is known for its community ministry and social justice advocacy. We serve our neighbors in many ways, walking alongside the most vulnerable members of our city. We have a long relationship with the Hundred Nights Shelter, serving as a location for overflow sleeping, preparing meals, hosting barbeques and advocating for our unhoused neighbors at city hall. St. James has initiated town wide mitten drives for Ukrainian refugees in Poland, as well as mitten and sock drives for local schools. We like socks, so we also donate lots of socks to Monadnock Family Services each Christmas. We support "Feeding Tiny Tummies” with a gift card drive at Christmas, and recently had a town wide cereal drive that filled their shelves with a thousand boxes of cereal. We are actively involved with the Monadnock Interfaith Project, which brings congregations around the Monadnock area together to advocate for more just housing. We take part in the annual Keene Pride Festival, raffling off a handmade quilt and some beautiful handmade shawls to raise money for the Pride in Motion Camp at Keene State College, and we advocate for LGBTQ rights in Concord. You can see the quilt from the 2022 festival on display in the Keene Public Library lobby. It was made by our Sewful Stitchers, who have found many ways to sew helpful items for the community, including placesmats for Meals on Wheels recipients, quilts for those on comfort care in the hospital and special pillows for breast cancer patients. Our prayer shawl knitters make shawls for those going through a difficult time and also hats and mittens for local unhoused neighbors. We want to encourage teens in the arts so we sponsor Keene High School Drama. And we have embarked on a serious exploration of how we can reduce or eliminate our carbon footprint as an institution. Perhaps most importantly, we show up at the City Hall and the NH Statehouse to advocate for the dignity and respect for every human being, particular for our unhoused neighbors in Keene and for transgender youth in NH. In addition to all these many collective ways we serve our neighbors, most members of St. James are involved individually in some kind of community ministry of their own - volunteering, serving on boards and donating. At St. James we feel called to love and serve our neighbors, and are always listening for what the Spirit might call us into next.