Fuller Center for Housing - NJP - Sandy Relief
After several years of serving through The Fuller Center for Housing on mission trips and other service projects, a groups of friends gathered to explore forming a Fuller Center for Housing in New Jersey. In one way or another, each person had been involved in leading or serving in mission trips devoted to disaster recovery, building, repairing and restoring homes for those who have suffered losses.
The result was the creation of The Fuller Center for Housing in the New Jersey Pines, based out of Tabernacle, NJ. It is the first Fuller Center covenant partner in the state of New Jersey. The FCH-NJP team has devoted themselves to continuing the story and journey of the Fullers and The Fuller Center for Housing - by providing decent housing for people in the southern New Jersey area.
After Hurricane Sandy (aka Super-Storm Sandy) made land fall along the eastern seaboard, the team of FCH-NJP felt moved to re-focus their attention on helping residents affected by the storm. They adopted Atlantic City as a satellite mission, focusing their full attention on the Hurricane Sandy Recovery.
Not only have they begun coordinating volunteers to help the long-term-recovery, but they also brought the 2013 Millard Fuller Legacy Build to Atlantic City. The Legacy Build brings hundreds of volunteers from around the country to serve together, for one week, in one massive act of service. Additionally, the attention the Legacy Build receives brings the exposure and visibility that the residents affected by this disaster desperately need.
The Fuller Center for Housing in the New Jersey Pines strives to provide people in need with a simple, decent place to live and raise their families while preserving their dignity and allowing them to “pay it forward”
We at the Fuller Center for Housing believe that:
-We are part of a God movement, and movements don't just stop.
-We have been called to this housing ministry; we didn't just stumble into it.
-We are unashamedly Christian, and enthusiastically ecumenical.
-We aren't a church but we are a servant of the Church.
-We are faith driven, knowing that after we've done all we can do the Lord will help finish the job—something that requires us to stretch beyond our rational reach.
-We are a grassroots ministry, recognizing that the real work happens on the ground in communities around the world through our covenant partners, so a large, overseeing bureaucracy isn’t needed.
-We try to follow the teachings of the Bible and believe that it says that we shouldn't charge interest of the poor, so we don't. -Government has a role in our work in helping set the stage, but that we shouldn't look to it as a means to fund the building of home.
