Answering the Call to Community: Carla Jaynes and Katherine Martin

SMPC Note: As part of our 2026 Operating Fund Campaign, Called to Community, we highlighted members’ experiences at SMPC as they answer the call to community of God’s mercy and love at SMPC.  This week we are highlighting SMPC Missions and Outreach Chairs Carla Jaynes and Katherine Martin. The transcript of their message is below. We celebrated Commitment Sunday on October 26. Please consider making a pledge to this year’s Operating Fund Campaign.

Good Morning. I’m Carla Jaynes and this is Katherine Martin. Together we chair the Missions and Outreach Committee here at South Mecklenburg Presbyterian Church.

One of the gifts of this role is that we get to see, week after week, how this congregation lives out God’s command to love our neighbors—here in Charlotte and around the world. Through your gifts of time, energy, and resources, the love of Christ is at work all around us.

As you have heard about over the last few weeks, our stewardship theme this year, Called to Community, comes from 1 John 4:7:

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.”

That verse reminds us—love isn’t just a feeling. It’s an action. It’s what compels us to show up, to serve, and to give.  It’s what connects us across neighborhoods, and even across oceans.

This summer, our committee read the book Hope Is Here. One message stood out: a longing to deepen relationships—within our church family and beyond these walls. That desire is at the heart of our Missions and Outreach priorities for the year ahead.

In the coming year, we will focus on: 

• Housing solutions, helping neighbors find and keep safe shelter.
• Feeding the hungry, meeting immediate needs while supporting long-term solutions.
• Educational equity, strengthening our partnership with Smithfield Elementary and working with other organizations to help ensure every child in our city can thrive. 
• Support for the LGBTQ+ community, ensuring all of God’s children are seen, loved, and affirmed.
• And of course continuing our global partnership in Haiti, through Ewo and Friends Empowering Haiti—supporting schools, clinics, and student sponsorships.
• Lastly, these priorities will continue to be rooted in a desire to learn more about and seek out Racial equity and inclusion, continuing the hard work of learning and acting for justice.

[KATHERINE]:

Our Mission and Outreach priorities focus on people—their physical needs, their belonging, their hope, and the shared truth that, as Civil Rights Leader Fannie Lou Hamer said, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

When we serve breakfast at the Salvation Army, when we tutor a student at Smithfield, when we sponsor a child in Haiti—we are participating in that freedom. We are living the gospel truth that our well-being is tied to the well-being of our neighbors, as we are all made in the image of a loving and holy God. 

Lee and I joined SMPC three years ago, and from day one, we were struck by the generosity of this congregation. At the time, SMPC was in the middle of raising three million dollars for this beautiful church home—on top of regular giving totaling more than one million dollars. 

That kind of generosity built more than a building. It created sacred space—a place to pray and sing, to share meals, to comfort one another, and to open our doors to groups like the Red Cross, the Scouts, and so many others who use this space as a blessing to the wider community.

Today, on Commitment Sunday, we have a new opportunity.  We can take that same spirit of generosity—the same faith and commitment that built this house—and turn it outward, to do even more in our city and around the world.

To care for the 5,000 children in Charlotte who are unhoused.
To stand with trans and queer youth who long for safety and belonging.
To support families choosing between a meal and a tank of gas.
To sponsor children in Haiti who long for a quality education and a solid meal each day. 

And so many more….

Carla and I—and so many of you—dream of a Missions and Outreach budget that reflects the depth of love this congregation has for all our neighbors.

So as you prayerfully consider your pledge this year, we invite you to give generously— to make an investment that allows SMPC to keep serving boldly, both within these walls and far beyond them.

Every gift builds on the foundation we’ve already created here together. Because all the resources we have are gifts from a loving and generous God, who calls us with our tithes and offerings to help bring glimpses of heaven to earth.

Thank you.