Care Ministries

Care and support ministries include: Hospital Care Ministry, Bereavement Ministry, Meals Ministry, Avenue for Men (focused on sexual addiction), Marriage Mentoring, SOZO Healing Prayer Ministry, Prayer Ministry, Financial Counseling, Stephen's Ministry, Hope Center, Mom's and Motherhood, and Twelve Step Addiction Recovery.

For more detailed information about these groups click here [PDF]

I still vividly remember the supermarket bags full of handwritten letters that he poured out onto the ground the week after he got back. Mounds of them written by members in the community, addressed to the Bexar County Jail, were piled all around his chair as he told us about the men he met who called him "Rev." I was not surprised when he told us that the only way he got through serving hot dogs in the jail cafeteria line was by singing the chorus to his favorite worship song. He was always the guy, a head taller than the rest of us, who in worship was not afraid to sing loudly no matter how off key he was, or keep rhythm by banging on the folding chair in front of him.

I remember the night before he was to be dropped off; all of us gathered around him with our arms outstretched praying. These moments are the moments when you realize how vital community is. It was so "Jesusy" to see a whole group of people with runny noses, who didn't care about having enough kleenex. I have never seen a teenage boy weep the way that I saw one of the basketball players, he coached, weep that night; completely unashamed. It seemed that we had all been stripped of our inhibitions, and I remember thinking, "is this what freedom is?" Is it the freedom to be shook so hard by crisis that we finally have to love each other, in a very small way, the way that God loves us?

This is what "care" looks like to us at the Riverside Community. It looks like runny noses, handwritten letters, and the courage to be fully immersed in God's love as we fully immerse ourselves in the broken situations of others.