When volunteers from Dudley Shoals Baptist Church return from their Coats for the City trip each December, they start getting ready for the next one. The coat collection has become a year-round effort that mobilizes their church for local, national and international outreach.
For Dudley Shoals Baptist Church, preparations for this year’s Coats for the City trip started last December — a couple of weeks after their previous trip to New York City.
“It’s a year-round effort for us,” said Kyle Lloyd, lead pastor at Dudley Shoals.
The church has a collection site dedicated to Coats for the City, a partnership between North Carolina Baptists, South Carolina Baptists and the Metropolitan New York Baptist Association that engages churches to serve alongside church plants in New York City. Churches collect winter coats to distribute to communities in need every December.
The effort began in 2011 with one church giving out about 600 coats through what was then called Coats for Queens. In 2024, N.C. Baptists distributed more than 8,300 coats, partnering with 26 New York City church plants to meet tangible needs while sharing the hope of the gospel.
Every year in the spring, Dudley Shoals members start connecting with neighboring churches, inviting them to donate coats. The church first participated in 2016 and has since cultivated partnerships with four church plants in New York.
“The partnership with these church planters and missionaries and people who have been sent” is “the reason we keep coming back,” Lloyd said.
“We’ve gotten to share the gospel through a pastry or through handing them a coat. My favorite thing is being able to see encouragement in church planters, especially in the dead of winter.”
They’ve worked with two house churches and two more established churches. At least once a month, Lloyd connects with the pastor at Redeeming Grace Baptist Church in Brooklyn, continuing to find ways to support them. Dudley Shoals once sent a popcorn machine to the church, a primarily Spanish-speaking congregation, to continue the outreach momentum in their community.
Coats for the City has also mobilized Dudley Shoals for other forms of missions engagement. It offers members an opportunity to immerse themselves in one of the most culturally diverse areas in the country.
“They can see the world by just getting on a short plane ride, and then we’ve been able to send people farther out from that,” Lloyd said. “It’s gotten people more willing to say ‘yes.’”
This July, Lloyd joined a team from Dudley Shoals on a mission trip to Peru. The team included “people that I started going on mission trips with to New York City,” he said.
“So getting to see that full circle moment is amazing.”
N.C. Baptist churches can get involved with Coats for the City in three ways:
- Collect coats by Nov. 10
Host a coat drive to collect warm winter coats for those in need in New York City. Coats should be new or like new. Help meet this year’s goal of 10,000 coats. - Sort and pack coats
Volunteers are needed to help with the final coat collection and sorting on Nov. 10 during the N.C. Baptist annual meeting and on Nov. 15 and 17. - Take a team to New York City
Register a team from your church to go to New York City in December and help with coat distribution.
Sign up today at coatsforthecity.org.
By Liz Tablazon, N.C. Baptist Contributing Writer
