We are here to help

Hope, Comfort, and Love for Wilsonville and Beyond.

Share The Warmth

Providing new or gently used winter clothing for local adults.

As temperatures drop, low-income or unhoused neighbors face an urgent need for warmth and comfort. Heart of the City is collecting warm winter clothing and supplies now through December.

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Loving and serving the whole person and whole community

Heart of the City is dedicated to the well-being of the community of Wilsonville and beyond. We provide support through services focused on the needs of our community.

How You Can Help

Our Staff Team

Director

Lyn Whelchel

lyn@theheartofthecity.org
(503) 582-8680

Administrator

Sandi Williams

info@theheartofthecity.org
(503) 582-8680

Justice and Partnerships

Jake Schwein

jake@gracechapelonline.org
(503) 570-2988 x109

Who We Are

The Heart of the City, a mission of Grace Chapel, is a place for partnering nonprofits and other organizations to reside, share meeting space, and join hands in the effort to maximize each others' work toward maximum impact for the Wilsonville community as well as Clackamas County, the greater Portland area and even throughout the world.

The Heart of City allows a holistic approach to caring for people. We are eternal beings with three primary parts: our soul (or spirit), our mind, and our body. Each part needs to be nourished and cared for, and each part feeds the other; they are interdependent. We need to collectively listen to, care for, and exercise our soul, our mind, and our body.

How You Can Help

Why We Do This

In response to the community need and our call to serve the whole person and whole community, Grace Chapel is founding The Heart of the City.

This mission, through a shared facility and support system, is a mission that addresses the mind, body and soul of each person. It will meet its purpose through connecting people, promoting health and wellness, expressing compassion and care, and providing personal development by maximizing resources via strategic partners

Connecting People

Every city is made up of many neighborhoods; thriving cities, in particular, are made up of healthy neighborhoods. All too often, neighborhoods can be filled with strangers instead of neighbors. The Heart of the City seeks to provide a safe place for relationships to foster and grow. Our goal is that this space will provide an accessible community gathering place for activities, meeting spots and life enhancing programs that will foster connections with friends and families. The Heart of the City will create an ethos of strengthening and uniting the community by bringing together its diverse, multi-generational and ethnic expressions.

Health and Wellness

We believe in a holistic approach to wellness - the importance of a person’s interior and exterior health. Through sports, fitness, and recreation, these initiatives help develop a positive use of leisure time and reduction of stress. Athletics and recreation can enhance health and wellness by increasing daily physical activity, teaching good nutrition, developing healthy relationships, learning social and interpersonal skills, and providing family centered activities.

Compassion and Care

The Heart of the City will serve as a hub of social responsibility for those in need. Whether hunger and poverty or abuse and recovery, The Heart of the City is created in response to social challenges and will function as a lifeline in our city and to communities around the world. We understand the challenges that keep individuals from reaching their full potential. We hope to respond with services and support that help people to be self-reliant and productive contributors to the community, while maintaining dignity and respect. We plan to provide support through services focused on critical needs such as a food distribution, medical clinics, child welfare, advocacy, addiction recovery, grief care, clothing, senior assistance, and benevolent resourcing. In addition, The Heart of the City will host a Counseling Center providing a caring environment for spiritual, mental and emotional well-being. Services will include support for those struggling with life issues, emotional trauma, substance abuse, behavioral problems, divorce recovery, as well as marriage and parenting workshops.

Personal Development

We believe that every person carries intrinsic value and has the potential for great things. We also believe the values and skills learned early on are vital building blocks for life. Living and thriving requires the opportunity to learn and grow in basic skills of life. The Heart of the City will seek to provide development programs, counseling services, transitional housing and educational opportunities including: adult basic education modules (math, reading, writing, social studies, spelling, vocabulary development), GED preparation, and college preparation assistance. It will also offer computer literacy, career employment skills education, resume writing, job search, and job training to help prepare individuals for the increasingly vigorous task of obtaining employment.

How We Do This

We will focus on leveraging what we have and giving ourselves away

This focus directly impacts how we create and manage all aspects of our operations. Whether we have a large or small space, an abundance or lack of funds, a large volunteer base or small, we will use whatever we have to be generous in meeting the needs of the whole person and the whole community.

We will focus on healthy relational partnerships

With so many needs how does one choose to partner with some organizations over others? We believe God has already gone before us and guided the development of our current relational partnerships and impacts whether they will be a part of The Heart of the City. Though organizations might be meeting tangible needs or have some aligned missions, we will not partner based on this factor alone.

We will focus on local first

We will focus on the most vulnerable

We will focus on partnership health

We will focus on the dignity and worth of every human life from conception to death

At Grace Chapel and, by extension, at The Heart of the City, we believe that every person is precious and created in the image of God. We believe the measure of an institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person. We acknowledge and celebrate that human life is sacred and that the dignity of the human person is the foundation of the moral vision for society as well as our community. We believe that life must be respected, appreciated and protected from conception until natural death. As such, we affirm that every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency.