Our Story

Our Car Care started as a ministry of the M & M Clise small group of Covenant Baptist Church of Shepherdstown, WV. Two of the families had a vision of showing God’s love to others by helping them keep their cars serviceable. After some prayerful discussions, it was decided that the “ministry target group” would be single custodial parents of children, under 18 years old, and living in a single adult residency. After serving about 500 parents over the past five years, we now call it a Single Moms Ministry because of the 500, only two were men and the rest female. Your “Ministry Target Group” may be some other group depending on the needs you see. It seems today the “Single Moms” are a growing group in most areas. Most ladies (not all) are not very experienced in the day to day maintenance of vehicles. This service ministry helps them keep their car on the road for work, taking the kids to the doctors, school and so forth. I believe that many single moms (if funds are tight and most are) will opt to let her child buy their school pictures (and hold off on the needed oil change) so that little one will feel more like the others in their class.

We do our Car Care on the first Saturday of each month. Because there are so many oil filters it is necessary to set appointments for each Car Care session. We normally schedule 15 clients each Saturday. We find that the hours of 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM seem to work quite well. One of our ladies does the scheduling with the single moms and sets appointments on 30 minute increments. We encourage the moms to bring their children with them for Car Care. When the ladies arrive we take their car and escort them and their kids to the ladies of our ministry group. We have “our” children at Car Care to interact with the Car Care kids. Hopefully, letting them know of the different programs that they can participate in at our church. This is a great opportunity for the Sunday School/Teen Ministry groups to be on hand to let the children, as well as the single moms, know what the church has to offer their children. Of the fifteen clients on a typical Saturday, three or four will be first timers. The single moms are made to feel welcome without any pressure and our ladies work to develop closeness with the mom and family. We are blessed that in our small group we have a family that provides delivery pizza each Saturday for the workers as well as the single moms and kids. Since the Car Care has started we have watched as God has started a “Single Moms” Sunday School class as well as a “Clothes Closet Ministry” to provide clothes for single moms to use for job interviews as well as everyday work.

Our group has grown in real and unique ways from Car Care Ministry. Of the typical number of eight guys in the garage each Saturday, four are from “our” group and the others are from the church at large. All are united and working to show God’s love to these ladies. They are one group united for that purpose. Many would say that there is an Army of Men ready to serve each Sunday in most church congregations but they need something to do. Most of the ladies that work with the single moms are the wives of the guys in the garage. They work arm in arm to show God’s love to single moms.

This ministry has grown our group very close and given us a common purpose in service to our Lord Jesus. We have watched the unsaved make decisions to become part of the family of God as well as some recommit their life. We have been blessed and we praise God for letting us experience this through showing God’s love to the single moms through Car Care. We started the www.carcareministry.com web site to share with others that they can do a Car Care Ministry in their own Church. We want to help other groups do Car Care Ministry because the single moms in most churches need the ministry to help them keep their much needed car on the road. This ministry is a very strong tool in today’s society with an ever growing single parent household world!