Local and ELCA Sources

St. Mark's supports and encourages its members to interact with the following local and ELCA sources:

ELCA Sources

Lutheran Marriage Encounter (LME)

“Making good marriages great.”  Lutheran Marriage Encounter is a weekend (44 hours) for couples to be away together. A weekend can supply greater depth, growth and enrichment in your relationship.

Gifts of Hope

Gifts of Hope enjoyed a very successful 2010Christmas season and will return again in December 2011. Gifts of Hope is available year round for birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions. If you have friends or family outside this Synod’s congregations who might be interested in purchasing Gifts of Hope through the mail, direct them to our Web site at www.GiftsOfHopeMetroDC.org/.

Lutheran World Relief (LWR)

Lutheran World Relief focuses on solving both immediate and long-term problems. Their development projects focus on issues at the root causes of poverty. These debilitating causes tend to domino into more and more problems that trap people in poverty. By the same token, attacking just one of these issues can help break the cycle, making people’s lives better and freeing them from suffering in many ways. St. Mark's supports LWR in their fight against poverty; get more information at the Lutheran World Relief (LWR) web site. 

Lynbrook Elementary School

As one of our neighborhood schools in the Fairfax County School District, Lynbrook Elementary School resides just across Backlick Road from St. Mark's and has a special relationship with us. Many of our members have been involved with the school's Mentoring Program for several years as well as providing instructors and bus-funding for several of their after-school programs; we also support special initiatives and needs when the school requests our help. We help to enrich their Family and School Partnerships, whose mission is "to connect, strengthen, and support Fairfax County's families, schools, and community by providing programs, resources, and services that promote student success in school and in life."

N Street Ministry

N Street Village was founded in 1973, an inter-faith response to the suffering in our nation’s capital. Since then, concerned people of many faiths have been working together to meet the immediate and long-term needs of homeless women and low-income families. Services for homeless women include a day center, night shelter, Wellness Center, addiction recovery programs and community living for those with mental illness. Services for families include affordable rental housing and childcare. For more information visit,  their Web site.

National Lutheran community and services (NLCS)

Several St. Mark's members participate in activities as auxilliary members at The Village at Rockville, MD, one of the Lutheran Retirement Communities of the National Lutheran Community and Services. For more information about NLCS, visit their Web site.

Our Partners In Mission

Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Haymarket, Virginia 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia   
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Republic of Namibia  
Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in the Slovak Republic
Salvadoran Lutheran Synod