Program areas at Maritime Ministries
Maritime Ministries served local churches by providing outreach to the cruiser communities in NC, VA, MD and SC in the past year. We helped to staff summer camps, provided youth group outings on our sailboats, as well as service opportunities to churches from NY, PA and OH.
Equipping and sending our small fleet of five ministry vessels into the Chesapeake Bay, Albemarle and Pamlico Sound with the purpose of Evangelism and local church support and encouragement to fellow Christians we meet along the way.
Maritime Ministries is taking a leadership role in the coordination and communication between ministries similar to our own who employ the use of boats, yachts or ships in the execution of their ministry or as a tool for their ministry. We help to facilitate an annual conference of these ministries called King's Fleet. In 2016, we gathered on the east coast of Sweden for the King's Fleet conference. In 2018 we will host the conference in North Carolina.
In 2016 our home region had three hurricanes which fortunately did not cause any significant damage to ministry property, but storms did serious damage to the waterway on which we live and work causing our canal to close for the remainder of 2016 and the spring/summer of 2017. In the typical year, we will engage several hundred boats both on our own docks and in the adjacent community. In 2017 we have 52 boats visit our docks and only 15 visited the nearby down docks. During the spring and summer seasons, we held cook-outs on the lawns of our college homeport inviting crews from those 52 boats for a potluck dinner and the establishment of new friendships.