AVC Staff

The Organization and the People Behind the Mission

Advancing Vibrant Communities, Inc. was launched in June 2002 by people with a burning passion to see the church serve the needs of its own community.

Our Mission: Believing that Christ has called us to love our neighbor in tangible ways, we will seek to honor God by meeting immediate individual needs in our community through the love and power of Christ.

We are committed to help move people out from inside the four walls of the church into the city, to meet the needs of their community through personal service.

Our Values:

• We know many people in our communities have great needs: physical, emotional, and spiritual;

• We believe there are more than enough resources within the church in America, and certainly in our own communities, to help meet those needs;

• We believe the church must reach out of its four walls and personally touch people where they are–at their points of need;

• We believe it is more effective for the church to lovingly and personally serve the needs of people outside its four walls, than it is for the church to ask hurting, needy people to enter the four walls for help!;

• We believe in preserving the dignity of needy people who are served;

• We believe in offering needy people a “hand-up” rather than a “hand-out”;

• We believe that Christ mandated our mission through his two-fold statement in Matthew 22:37-40: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

• We believe we can’t be “salt and light” if we stay in the salt shaker and fail to open the shutters of the lighthouse!

The People of Advancing Vibrant Communities:

The Board of Directors
The Advancing Vibrant Communities Board of Directors consists of people who have a burning passion to see the church in America meet the needs of its communities!

• President/CEO:
  Rev. Michael Douglass
• Chairman of the Board:
  Robert Chin, M.D. (Cornerstone Family Medical Group)
• Treasurer:
  Robert Marks (Rogers Jewelry Company)
• Director:
  Chris Whitler (Youth With A Mission)

AVC Staff

• Rev. Michael Douglass, President/CEO
• Brenda Lipomi, Office Manager / Director of Operations
• Ann Black, Service Coordinator

Lead Volunteers

• Jon Engell / Bill Parkhurst, Volunteer Construction Team Foremen
• Dr. Robert Chin / John Kitchell, Medical Team Coordinators
• “The Furniture Friends!” (Deliveries) Ferman Morillo, Dave Hanneke, Phil Blake, Glenn Andrews.
• Jan Stambaugh, Accounting