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Spring City and Royersford area residents are invited to come together as a community this Sunday, July 15, for a Victory Sunday block party at Victory Park, Royersford. Food, fellowship, games and live worship are planned.
The family event will run from noon to 6 p.m. with music by two worship teams, a food vendor, children’s activities and a two-and-one-half story rock climbing wall. Backed by 13 to 20 Spring-Ford area churches, the block party was organized by Thunder Outreach, a faith-based community initiative.
Thunder Outreach president Mark Malizzi noted the event is an opportunity for the people of the community to come together and get to know each other. “It’s time for us to be a community,” he remarked. “Hopefully people will get to know each other. It’s amazing when we get to know our neighbors,” he said.
“We also want to bless the community,” Malizzi said. Thunder Outreach networks with agencies that reach out to families in need. In the Royersford event, people are being asked to bring nonperishable food items, all of which will be given to Project Outreach and Open Door for distribution through their food pantries in Royersford and Spring City.
Thunder Outreach, which was formed in 2004, has a pretty impressive record when it comes to “blessing” the community.
Wayne Bainbridge, community outreach team leader with Thunder Outreach, described two of the organization’s previous events. The first Thunder in the Valley event was “more or less a clothing drive” in Boyertown, when two tractor trailers were packed with donated clothing items which were given to the local Salvation Army.
Thunder in the Valley 2005 was a community food drive that set a world record for the number of pounds of food donated in a 24-hour period. That event resulted in a collection of 156,899 pounds of food. “We are happy to say that our record was defeated by another food drive located on the west coast,” Bainbridge said. “It was just a mark set to challenge other communities.
Thunder Outreach seeks to serve the entire community, not one particular church. “We enjoy doing events to help communities come together with the hopes of reaching people who need to know Jesus by taking church outside the four walls of church,” Bainbridge remarked. “We also are helping churches to realize the strongest impact for Christ can be made when Christians actually work with other churches.”
Malizzi also stressed the cooperative nature of Thunder Outreach. “We’re all part of the same community … we have the same needs,” he commented.
That philosophy is actively demonstrated in Heaven’s Thunder, a worship team which is part of Thunder Outreach and one of the two which will be involved in Sunday’s block party. The worship team is made up of members from various churches, Malizzi described, and is “proof denominations can work together.”
The other worship band participating in the Victory Sunday block party will be Grace Extreme, from Grace Assembly of God, Spring City. Malizzi noted a DJ will provide music between the live bands.
Among the churches supporting the event are First Church for Men; First United Church of Christ, Living Hope Community Church, Bethel United Methodist Church, Spring City Fellowship and Grace Assembly of God, all of Spring City; Daybreak Community Church, Church of the Nazarene, Gethsemane Tabernacle of Hope, Providence Church of the Brethren and Trinity Evangelical Congregational Church, all of Royersford, and Oasis Ministries Church.
Corporate partners include Fred Beans Ford of Boyertown and the Fred Beans Family of Dealerships in Limerick, sponsors of the rock wall; DRS Groceries, Pottstown; Harleysville National Bank, and Kulp Car Rentals, Gilbertsville.
For more information visit www.thunderoutreach.com or call Thunder Outreach at 484-942-8709.
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