St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church participated in the 2026 Innovation Lab, presented by a partnership between the Presbytery of Baltimore and PC(USA)’s Office of Innovation. Learn more – Apply for 2027 Innovation Lab Cohort

St Andrew’s set up a table at the Mt Airy Farmer’s Market once a month in May, June, July and September (rained out in August).  While ultimately our hope was to invite people to participate in our St Andrew’s community, our immediate goal was to increase visibility (our church is off the beaten track, tucked away in a corner of a local park) and show the community what St Andrew’s has to offer.  For this reason, we focused more on what we could give rather than what we might get.  Handing out the “little Jesus” giveaways and our “prayer pillows” gave us an opportunity to talk about our Caring Quilters group (which makes quilts for children facing serious illness or other crisis), our pot luck lunches, VBS, labyrinth, participation in food resources and others outreach projects.  Because we involved our Caring Quilters group (which includes both church members and others from the community) in making the prayer pillows, this helped our members begin to think beyond Sunday morning and ways we can reach out to the community, an attitude we hope to continue.  

Hopefully our Innovation project will inspire us to realize that even our small church can reach the community in ways beyond our building.

As a follow-up, the farmer’s market is going to have a holiday market in early December and we have signed up to do that as well. This will give us an opportunity to promote our Christmas events and perhaps be an incentive to consider planning new activities we can
offer the community.

– Diane Bayless, Deacon, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church