Norine's Notes
Norine's Notes
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Stephen Ministry
St. John’s Church has a Stephen Ministry program. As I learned about it, I felt this was a ministry where I wanted to be involved. The Stephen Ministry program was developed in St. Louis, Missouri in 1975 by Kenneth Haugk. He is both a pastor and clinical psychologist and saw that the people’s needs for care in his congregation far exceeded what he could provide. He developed materials and a training program that would train lay people to provide one to one Christian care giving to people experiencing a personal crisis. Word of this successful program quickly spread. Now Stephen Ministry has trained over 300,000 lay people in over 100 different denominations, and these trained Stephen Ministers have provided care to nearly a million care receivers. People benefiting from Stephen Ministry care include those having difficulty coping with life problems. These problems might be health related, hospitalization, terminal illness, loss of a loved one, divorce, unemployment, financial crisis, retirement, parenting issues, or empty nest plus numerous other life transitions. To become a Stephen Minister a person goes through an application, screening, selection, and training process before becoming commissioned. The training program is an intensive 50 hour course. In addition the person commits to attending twice monthly supervision and continuing education programs and actively participating in Stephen Ministry for two years.
My Commissioning ceremony at St. John’s in 1998. A Stephen Minister is usually assigned one care receiver at a time. They meet with that person for about an hour a week. These meetings are process oriented rather than results oriented. We listen. We pray. We allow Christ to work through us on behalf of the care receiver. We are not providing professional mental health services. We are Christian caregivers, Christian friends. After my initial two year commitment, I agreed to become a Stephen Ministry Leader at St. John’s. This involved attending a one week Leaders Training Course in Orlando that furthered my knowledge, skills, enthusiasm, and leadership skills. Thus I became prepared to train new Stephen Ministers, assign care receivers to care givers, and provide additional support and educational resources to the program and the congregation For more information about the Stephen Ministry program visit their web site: http://www.stephenministries.org
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