Evening Prayer Outreach to Nursing Home
In February 2024, Christ the Saviour Anglican Church, Alexandria, VA launched Evening Prayer on Fridays for the residents and staff of Mt. Vernon Nursing and Rehab (MVNR). We had been praying about local outreach and discerned the Lord leading us to MVNR. At the same time, our clergy providentially met Fr. Michael Niebauer at a DOMA clergy day. His ministry, “Heritage Mission: Bringing the Church to Care Facilities,” became the critical resource for starting our service.
Our MVNR congregation is growing and filled with ‘regulars.’ We offer refreshments after the thirty-minute service, so we can become better acquainted and pray individually. This has met such an important need that residents have requested a Bible study. Our team is not large enough to support that, but we are plugging MVNR residents into our parish Bible studies via Zoom when possible. The loneliness we encounter in our MVNR congregation has also prompted our Evening Prayer team to visit residents mid-week (plus an hour prior to Evening Prayer to remind them that it is Friday!) in order to forge friendships and help them feel ‘seen’.
The Heritage Mission seeks to bring ‘church’ to care facilities, both to those who can no longer attend church off-site and to those who do not yet know Christ. Heritage Mission partners with Anglican Churches of any size, even small ones like ours. The training makes it easy for a lay-led team to onramp weekly worship by providing a simplified order of service and homily templates as well as MP3s for a range of hymns. In this way, singing can be an integral part of the service even if the host church cannot field a music team.
Christ the Saviour has found this outreach to be very rewarding, as we bring Jesus to a lonely and disabled community that is often ignored. We are also humbled that the Lord has answered our prayer to grow, not in the way we expected, but with our MVNR congregation that has doubled the size of our parish. We strongly encourage our sister churches to prayerfully discern if this is an outreach the Lord is calling you to offer in a local nursing home. The need is great, and the Heritage Mission is available to provide guidance and support.
Learn more about Heritage Mission.