Emmanuel Church made Impact Week an annual tradition, giving impact team members an opportunity to complete projects to make a difference in their community.

The church’s four campuses — Greenwood, Banta, Franklin and Garfield Park — had participated in recent years.

Within the past year, a fifth campus opened in Seymour, so members of that congregation recently were able to get involved in what’s now known as Serve Week.

Among the five locations, more than 1,000 impact team members served more than 50 organizations and put in 130 service hours. That included 135 people from the Seymour campus, which was the most from one location, Campus Pastor Andy Schroeder said.

“First and foremost, we want to establish our congregation locally as a presence in our community, that we love and we care for our community and we want to support and help any way we can, and that’s just a big part of our DNA of who we want to be as a church,” he said.

The church’s service began Sept. 9 by joining a group from Seymour High School for a Tents and Tailgates event with booths, bounce houses, food, giveaways and other activities in front of the school’s gymnasium before a varsity football game.

Emmanuel’s student ministries director, Keia Blair, oversaw the project with the school committee.

“We were able to love on the kids at the high school. There were a lot of kids,” said Jess Ritz, the church’s ministry and host director.

Then Sept. 10, Emmanuel had 35 members divided onto three teams to participate in The Alley’s annual Thousand Ten Project. The idea is to have teams of 10 people with each individual putting in $10 and going out in the community and using the money to make a difference.

One of the teams helped a family in Seymour.

“They had just had a fire at their home in Columbus and moved here,” said Lea Ann Schroeder, kids director at the church.

“They moved here, didn’t have anything, they were behind on some bills and we were able to take care of some of those,” Andy said. “We got groceries for them, we bought a grill for them and a whole bunch of other things.”

Another team bought groceries for senior citizens at a local apartment complex. Kelsie Rieker,…