Healing Tree Mental Health
Macedonia UMC, it has been a busy season for both our church and for the newly developing ministry of Healing Tree Mental Health.
In November 2023, Rev. Dr. Toby James began his consulting work with us as a church community. Toby is helping us develop this mental health nonprofit, including all of the groundwork that needs to be laid before this mental health practice is a reality. Toby met with our church leadership in a variety of capacities in his first three months. The Church Council and the former “Connection Hub Team” discerned that our name would be Healing Tree Mental Health. So what is formerly the “Connection Hub” is now officially Healing Tree. Our hope with this name is to help people see their rootedness and connectedness, and that in establishing their tree and naming it they can experience a pathway to healing.
Since developing that name, we purchased the domain www.healingtree.org. Nothing is up on this website yet, but it’s important that we have one as the nonprofit develops. Toby has also worked with us to file as an North Carolina nonprofit, and we are currently working through the steps to develop a 501©3 organization.
Building
The restoration work on the Healing Tree side of the building is almost complete. We are grateful to the Trustees for their diligence on seeing this project through. Once that restoration work is complete, we are working with a General Contractor, Livingstone Builders, to update and refresh that side of the building. We will update you on that work and a timeline once some details have been settled with the Town of Cary. You can pray that these details can get ironed out swiftly.
Funding
One main reason for establishing Healing Tree as a nonprofit is so that we can pursue a variety of avenues of funding. We have had many conversations with grant and philanthropic funders, and are completing a grant application for the NC Conference Mission Endowment over the next two weeks. Please pray for this continual drive for funding to help Healing Tree get off the ground.
We are also eligible for a loan from the NC Board of Missions, Inc. This loan could help us with the upfitting work on the building and would be available to us at a very low rate. The hope is that Healing Tree will eventually be able to help repay this loan as it becomes a sustainable organization.
If you ever have any questions, possibilities for funding, or other ideas, please contact Pastor Kevin at kevin@macedoniaumc.org or Toby James at toby@healingtree.org.