The Heritage 500 Fund is a ministry of Heritage Baptist Church of Mogadore, Ohio. The Heritage Baptist Church has been actively involved in helping those in the community for over 20 years.

 

Under the guidance of Pastor Gerald Collingsworth the church has a very large outreach ministry. The church provides outreach and transportation to and from our events and services to the city of Akron and its suburbs, the city of Canton, the city of Kent, and the city of Ravenna. Our events and services are open to the public and free to attend.

 

In 2005 Jarrod Collingsworth approached Pastor Collingsworth about why the church does not do more for the community, why we do not have more activities, etc. Pastor’s answer was simple, “everything cost money and if you can come up with the money than you can do all these things”. So after much prayer  and thought Jarrod Collingsworth came up with the idea of starting the Heritage 500 Fund. To Jarrod this seemed like a perfect solution since he has always been very involved in fundraising and the community has always been very generous when it comes to community support.So after approaching Pastor Collingsworth with the idea it was brought before the church and they were open to trying this idea, and thus the Heritage 500 Fund was born.

 

Heritage 500 was based on the theme of  Hebrews 12:1, “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us”. Life is a race and it matters how we run it, and how we finish it. We at Heritage 500 want to run our race of life helping as many people as we can along the way, thus helping them to run their race, and hopefully us and those around us can have a satisfying finish.

 

In 2006 we had our first large event, the Heritage 500 Vacation Bible School, but this was no ordinary Vacation Bible School. We saw an average attendance of 300 nightly with 400+ on family night. The community was very generous with their support. We were able to give away a minivan to a local parent, and a car to a local teenager, and a go cart to a local child. We were able to give several all expense paid drivers training certificates to several local teens, and much, much more.

 

In 2008 with such growth and success it was decided to further our goals and start funding scholarships for qualified individuals, as well as start an annual teen retreat, and then the recession hit. With the recession hitting it caused many of our donors to be unable to continue support, but it also caused are needs to go up with the increase of need in the community. For the past several years the community has been so gracious during these struggling times to do what they can and we are so grateful.

 

With the year 2011 upon us we are so excited to see much accomplished this year. We hope with your help we can reach our goal of $50,000 and see many children, teens, and families lives changed in our communities.