Common Grounds
Home to UKirk at UVA (Westminster’s undergraduate campus ministry), Common Grounds is a space for UVA students to share meals and conversation, study, and enjoy coffee, tea, and snacks. The building is also the gathering spot for 20/30/40 CreW (Westminster’s ministry with graduate students and young adults), youth classes, and other community events.
Upstairs in Common Grounds, there are small offices for nonprofit organizations supporting the Charlottesville community. Current residents include BEATDiabetes, Habitat for Humanity’s Virginia Office, and Theological Horizons.
Over the decades, Common Grounds has been a space to share ideas, question, and connect. Within its walls, people have discussed important issues of each generation, called for social justice, raised prayers, and played music. Thanks to an innovative new community partnership, by fall 2024 the ground floor of Common Grounds will become a second location for Kindness Cafe + Play, a local coffee shop with an amazing mission. The space will continue to be UKirk at UVA’s home while welcoming the broader community to enjoy coffee and kindness for a good cause during designated hours.
Hunger Offerings
We participate in our Presbytery’s Hunger Offering six times a year to support The Presbyterian Hunger Program (PHP), a ministry of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The PHP works to alleviate hunger and eliminate its causes, responding with compassion and justice to poor and hungry people in local communities in the United States and internationally.
Through giving, Presbyterians provide the PHP with approximately four million dollars a year to support ministries of direct food relief, development assistance, public policy advocacy, education, and lifestyle integrity. The PHP seeks to fulfill its mission through strategic grant-making, print and web educational and worship materials, partnership collaborations, and participatory programs that allow us to recognize and love especially the most vulnerable of our neighbors next door and across the planet.
Peace and Global Witness Offering
The Peace & Global Witness Offering encourages the church to cast off anxiety and fear, discord and division, and embrace our God’s mission of reconciliation to those around the corner and around the world.
Pentecost Offering
The Pentecost Offering unites us in a church-wide effort to support young people and inspire them to share their faith, ideas, and unique gifts with the church and the world.
One Great Hour of Sharing
The One Great Hour of Sharing offering is taken on Easter Sunday and enables the church to share God’s love with our neighbors-in-need around the world by providing relief to those affected by natural disasters, provide food to the hungry, and helping to empower the poor and oppressed.
Christmas Joy Offering
By giving to the Christmas Joy Offering, you honor God’s gift of Jesus Christ by providing assistance to current and retired church workers in their time of need and developing our future leaders at Presbyterian-related schools and colleges equipping communities of color.
Worship
Your pledge to Westminster supports our pastors who preach the Word of God, lead, teach and empower us to serve Christ. This stimulates us to grow as disciples and share God’s love. In response to the recent pandemic, your support has allowed us to provide regular worship services online and reach new worshippers seeking spiritual guidance during these challenging times. The church continues to welcome visitors and new members, while many church members assist with the worship services. Your generosity will enable us to return to worshipping in a well-maintained and welcoming sanctuary once it is safe to do so.
We Recognize a Crisis
Christian faith is being used to persecute and marginalize transgender and nonbinary people across this country. We recognize the systemic harm that is being done in the name of Christianity, and we are actively seeking to improve our practice of faith and not contribute to the dysphoria for our transgender siblings.
As a church community, we welcome all people regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. We believe that trans women and girls are female and trans men and boys are male, and that God loves them as such. We aspire to create an affirming space where transgender and nonbinary people feel welcome and loved and where intersectional diversity is normalized and embraced.
We recognize that the mental health and well-being of our transgender and nonbinary siblings is negatively affected by the rejection and bias of other Christian faith communities. There is an urgency to take action now to establish physical and emotional safety as well as safety within the Christian faith.
Our goal is to create a space that will not burden or add to dysphoria but will be accepting and affirming — a space where transgender and nonbinary people can thrive and flourish as an integral part of the beautiful, diverse, whole body of Christ.
Our family is pretty queer! That is to say, we have three young people in our immediate and extended family that identify as LGBTQIA. Talk of global injustices had pretty much always been part of our conversations at home and we tried ‘to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God,’ at least most of the time. The continued targeting of LGBTQIA persons in our country causes me great concern. Shootings, attacks, and even political wrangling over where a person can go to the restroom fill the daily lives of queer people. Marriage equality is wonderful, but serious issues still remain for further equality. Healthcare for spouses and housing discrimination are just two. Our presence at Cville PRIDE is one of the ways Westminster shows up in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community. It celebrates an openness and support for our gay, trans, and nonbinary friends. It shows our community that as a place of faith, we can support marginalized persons. It helps us to get to know our siblings and is just plain fun! This church has provided our family with a church home for more than 15 years. Love and comfort both come from here. And acceptance. My hope is that all people can know this kind of comfort.”
— Laura Young, Westminster Peace, Justice, and Inclusion Division member