Pastor Sherwynn Patton - Greater Mt. Zion Church
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Sherwynn Patton is first of all a lover of God, his family, people and his community.
As an Austin Texas, Native raised primarily in the East Austin Community
Sherwynn developed a love for the community that he grew up in.
After several years of rebelling against authority figures, Sherwynn accepted Jesus
Christ as his leader and began to realize that he had a heart to see spiritual,
social,economic and educational revitalization in the East Austin community.
As Sherwynn and his wife, Kim Patton, began to look at the deteriating families,
rising drop out rates, increase in domestic violence and high recidivisim rates
inspite of the fact that there were churchs on nearly every corner in the East Austin
Community, they begin to develop what they believe to be a God given vision for a
community collaborative action plan.
Their vision was to see people of good faith working with people of good will to
meet our neighbors' most pressing needs while at the same time meeting their most
immediate spiritual needs. From that vision Sherwynn and Kim developed Greater
Restoration at Greater Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Greater Restoration began as a
prison ministry and has now developed into a community partnership and
collaboration with several entities in the city to serve the educational, social,
spiritual and economic needs in this community.
The unique structure of the collaboration is that not all of the entities involved are
Christian, in fact many are not, but the central point in this community collaboration
is the common cause and common good even when we don't have the same
beliefs. Greater Restoration believes in asking the two most powerful questions that
gets you entry into nearly any place... "What can we do to help?" and "Do you care
about what we care about?"
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