Beloved Community

Beloved Community Ministries at St. Matthew’s encompasses all our parish ministies that seek to enact, build, and strengthen beloved community, God’s Kingdom, in our local communities. This includes reckoning and reconcilitation in areas where the Christian Church has done harm, active mission partnerships with direct service agencies, collaborative leadership in Orange County Justice United, and financial grants and sponsorships for parishes, non-profits and agencies.

This picture is of Heaven Practice, a multi-church effort to bring white and historically black churches together for worship and table fellowship.

  • Reckoning & Reconciliation

    Because of the parish’s foundation in slavery, we have a particular call to address long standing inequities and wounds caused by racial violence and racism in Orange County.

    St. Matthew’s has also long been an welcoming and affirming parish, and continues in its work to heal wounds caused by discrimination against the LGBTQIA+ community.

  • Mission Partnerships

    From Habitat for Humanity to Meals on Wheels, from Re-Entry House and prison ministry to offering our campus to community groups, St. Matthew’s “flows down the hill” into active collaboration with mission partners.

  • Justice United

    Orange County Justice United is our main vehicle for engaging with the whole Orange County community for positive change. Bringing people together from every walk of life, every age, every race, Orange Couny Justice United raises the voices of the disempowered and raises them up in leadership.

  • Community Grants and Sponsorships

    St Matthew’s is a generous parish! Our Social Ministries group receives grant requests and annually awards grants to groups making God’s love for this world tangible in the world.

Beloved Community Events and News