Within menu, click arrows for subpages
Click horizontal bars for menu
Fellowship and Service
“Goodness never fails to receive its reward, for goodness makes life a blessing. As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing.”
- Mary Baker Eddy, The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, page 165:15
When we love and appreciate the goodness in each other, that’s fellowship. And when we help each other, that’s service. Our Sunday School students are discovering that we can’t separate our love for each other from serving the community because we are all one — the adults attending church upstairs while children are downstairs in Sunday School, the families who live near our church, the citizens and strangers in our city, and people all over the world. We’ve included some examples of how we are loving and serving.
"A grateful heart a garden is,
Where there is always room
For every lovely, Godlike grace
To come to perfect bloom."
- Christian Science Hymnal #3
We've brought our love of the earth outside for our neighbors to enjoy. The Sunday School and church members beautified our parking lot by adding colorful handprints to its wooden fence and by decorating the church garden with bricks painted with Bible and Christian Science messages. It was a joyous project, and as a treat, we enjoyed some sweet icy snowballs, a New Orleans tradition.
The Sunday School students and their friends filled grocery bags with sandwiches, chips, fruit, and a Christian Science Sentinel to deliver to some of the homeless people in New Orleans.
Sunday School students also sold decorated oyster shells and crosses at a local crafts fair to raise money for the Petals of Africa School in Kenya.
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” - Christ Jesus, Gospel of Matthew, 25:35
“Academics of the right sort are requisite.” - Eddy, Science and Health, page 195:19
We’ve enjoyed travel presentations by Sunday School students and church members who’ve traveled throughout the Arab world, Nepal, Thailand, Israel, and on a Principia Abroad trip to England. (Principia is a school for Christian Scientists, preschool through college.)
Click on the image of the large faces to meet Alex Cook and to learn about the spiritual inspiration moving his brush.
“Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love — be it song, sermon, or Science — blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty.”
- Eddy, Science and Health, page 234:4
Songwriter and muralist Alex Cook performed a concert at 4th Church and painted inspiring murals at a local public elementary school. From this modest start on New Orleans' Westbank, Alex’s “You Are Loved” mural project has expanded to more than 200 murals in schools, churches, prisons, and community centers across the United States and abroad.