Joy to the Burg

2021

Mark Your Calendar

Award Winning

Joy To The Burg recently won Best Brand Identity/Unique Marketing Campaign at the 2021 Nonprofit Innovation Awards Ceremony held by the Central Penn Business Journal in partnership with The Foundation for Enhancing Communities (TFEC), Lancaster County Community Foundation and York County Community Foundation. (Article; Video)

Joy To The Burg 2021 is Presented by

in partnership with

Cause

Bringing Joy To The Burg
In 2019, Sheldon Jones felt a burden. He was fairly new to Harrisburg and concerned by seeing people sleeping on sidewalks downtown around his church, Market Square Presbyterian. Being a musician and music lover, he hatched an idea: what if local artists could put together a Christmas album to raise funds to help these folks get off the street. Sheldon ran it by several artists and also his pastor, who connected him with Christian Churches United (CCU). Sheldon, the artists, and CCU joined hands to begin working on what was soon called Joy To The Burg. As we worked on that first album, we learned that Harrisburg’s only winter walk-in shelter for women would not be able to continue during the 2019-2020 winter season. CCU leadership quickly stepped up, found space offered by Grace United Methodist Church in the shadow of the state capitol building, and with funding from Joy To The Burg opened a new women’s winter walk-in shelter the week of Christmas 2019. Joy To The Burg had an immediate impact as the album was enthusiastically received by the community. 

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For Such A Time As This
In 2020 and again in 2021, everyone associated with the project agreed we should continue to build on this success. These past two years all of our lives have been impacted as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. When we couldn’t do a live concert, ABC27 provided a one-hour Christmas TV special. Karns agreed to sell the album in all of their grocery stores. Many others rallied creatively during the pandemic, all while calls for help to CCU’s programs sky-rocketed. Born out of a time of natural disaster, CCU is once again able to be a community-wide source of support, now
to people reeling from the pandemic. Joy To The Burg has helped CCU expand the women’s winter shelter with additional space and protocols necessary during a pandemic, as well as doing the same for the men’s winter shelter that CCU has run for many years. The album has helped people on the street find tangible help to get into long-term housing, including CCU’s Susquehanna Harbor Safe Haven long-term residential program for men who were chronically homeless. When you give the gift of Joy To The Burg, you not only support the local arts community and bless your loved ones with the gift of music, you provide hope and housing to our most vulnerable neighbors. Thank you.

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About CCU
When Hurricane Agnes flooding devastated central Pennsylvania in 1972, churches rallied to do what we hope all churches do…love their neighbor. Several hundred churches joined together to quickly form a flood emergency fund. They ran this fund for years, supporting neighbors as they rebuilt their homes and lives. Through this collaboration, the vision for Christian Churches United was formed and formalized in the late 70’s: for churches to work together on an on-going basis to support their neighbors facing crises or challenges such as poverty, homelessness and incarceration. In 1982, the “Ecumenical Emergency Fund” was transitioned into a permanent walk-in assistance office:
HELP Ministries of CCU. Learn more at www.ccuhbg.org.

Helping the Homeless

The

"Whoever is generous to the poor, lends to the Lord," Proverbs 19:17