Covenant Community Care Receives $500,000 Grant

DETROIT, MI (May 24, 2012) – A new $500,000 federal grant will enable Covenant Community Care to improve access at its Michigan Avenue facility for people with disabilities and families with small children. The money also will fund a backup generator and new diagnostic center.

The funding is part of $19.6 million the Department of Health and Human Services is granting to community health centers throughout Michigan and $728 million across the country.

Covenant Community Care is a ministry to the underserved sponsored by denominational churches in the Detroit area and Covenant Ministries of Benevolence. It offers integrated medical, dental and behavioral health care to nearly 10,000 patients annually through its three locations.

Congregation Doesn’t Want ‘Cool Church’ Label

PROVIDENCE, RI (May 24, 2012) – Although Sanctuary Church meets in a bar and the service is unlike others in the area, the congregation does not want to be seen as the “cool church,” pastor Alexander Mook told a local news organization that featured the Evangelical Covenant Church plant in a news article.

“No way do you want that label,” Mook says in the article. “Grey hairs and mohawks need to be in the same room together.”

The article quotes attendees who are in their twenties as well as a couple who graduated in the 1960s.

Mook had not planned on being a pastor, let alone starting a church. He did, however, enjoy hosting a group that met on Sunday evenings at Christ Church, a Covenant congregation in East Greenwich, Rhode Island.

“We’d sing and read the scriptures and read Flannery O’Connor and Dostoevsky and drink wine,” Mook says.

Over a period of several years, the number of participants increased and many of the participants lived in Providence. Mook then felt led to start Sanctuary in the city.

Sanctuary is scheduled to officially launch in September.