St. Aidan's Episcopal Church

We are engaged in hunger ministry in five primary ways. We receive food donations every week, present them monthly in a liturgical manner and deliver them to our local food pantry. We cook a meal each month for the Ann Arbor homeless shelter that also serves dinner to any hungry adults in the community. We participate in the annual CROP Hunger Walk with both donations and walkers. We participate annually in the “Bread for the World” letter writing campaign. We write letters as part of the morning’s liturgy and present them liturgically in the offering before sending them on to Washington. In 2012, with our ministry partner, Northside Presbyterian, St. Aidan's constructed a food garden in our front yard and participating in the "Faith and Food" program of ICPJ (The Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice) that provides fresh produce for needy individuals and families in Washtenaw County. Our children are included in the activities and encouraged to participate and reflect on what we are doing

Shelter

We participate in housing ministries by hosting homeless men in our building for a week each year as an overflow shelter in coordination with our local homeless shelter. Youth as well as adults participate in this hospitality.

St. Aidan's helped create the Religious Action for Affordable Housing (RAAH). Together with other RAAH members and member congregations, we helped raise (with individual and operating fund donations) the $200,000 needed to buy the land for Carrot Way, a low income housing development for families and disabled people that was developed by Avalon Housing. Also with RAAH, we helped raise (with St. Aidan's Christmas offering) $50,000 to support the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative (MPRI) to place returning prisoners with physical and mental disabilities (the most difficult to place) in our community. We helped (through the proceeds of the Rector's 30th yr. ordination celebration) RAAH with a housing first program that supports people living at 15% of the median income in the county. Another Christmas Offering is supporting the rebuilding of a low-income housing project that would have been lost through property deteroiation.

We hold a gift ingathering each Epiphany to help a homeless family moving into housing in partnership with a number of local agencies that work with homeless individuals and families.

St. Aidan's have two active computer workstations for the community to use and a public wi-fi connection. Several residents of the neighboring Avalon House have regularly used the computers we have made available to the community to accomplish their assignments for local schools and colleges.

We are fortunate to occupy five acres of second growth forest within an otherwise congested urban setting adjacent to the University of Michigan North Campus. This area has been certified as a Wildlife Habitat and contains two nature paths, along with a resident family of deer. And, we believe it is our spiritual and civic duty to maintain and share this beautiful gem with the community.

This property has inspired many of us to become advocates for ecological-justice and environmental sustainability and St. Aidan's is the first congregation in Michigan to join the GreenFaith Certification Program, an inter-faith alliance dedicated to inspiring, educating and mobilizing people for environmental leadership.

St. Aidan's received a gift of a 10 acre lakeside conservation site in 2012. This site now knows as Aidansfarne will provide a beautiful place for nature spirituality retreats and a rich site for environmental conservation.