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Stephen Ministry Responds to Life's Jagged Lines

Our Mother of Sorrows Parish in Tucson is marking the fifteenth anniversary this year of a ministry that is all about responding to the jagged line in a person's life.

The jagged line can be any one of the worst experiences of life--death of a child, bitter divorce, devastating disease, drug addiction, loneliness.

Life draws those jagged lines.

Stephen Ministry is responding to those jagged lines with Christ's healing love.

It is about the one-on-one relationship of care-receiver to care-giver, a relationship that really is one-on-one with Christ.

Named for the account in the Acts of the apostles when the deacon Stephen and six others were commissioned to care for members of the Church, Stephen Ministry began in 1975 after Missouri pastor and psychologist Dr. Kenneth Haugk realized that there were many more hurting people in his congregation than he alone could even try to help.

Drawing on his ministerial experience and education in clinical psychology, Dr. Haugk trained nine members of his Protestant congregation to provide one-on-one care that is animated by the love of Christ.

Today, the Ministry that Dr. Haugk and his wife, Joan, co-founded is being performed in 9,000 congregations in 100 denominations by more than 300,000 lay ministers, 24 of whom are parishioners of Our Mother of Sorrows.

Stephen Ministry came to the parish in 1989.

"Stephen Ministry is a great gift within our parish community, a gift of compassionate outreach to those who are experiencing painful transition in their lives," wrote pastor Msgr. Tom Cahalane in a recent parish bulletin note about the ministry's anniversary.

Msgr. Cahalane brought the ministry to the parish in 1989. In the 15 years that have passed, 150 parishioners have been trained in Stephen Ministry, and more than 1,000 parishioners have received the benefit of that training.

Training is required for participation in Stephen Ministry as a care-giver.

The training is about being a Christian with the skills to support others in a time of need, skills such as listening, feeling, assertiveness, confidentiality and ministering to people in specific situations such as grieving after a death, terminal illness, marital problems and divorce.

The training also includes how to recognize when a person's needs are beyond the ability of the Stephen Minister to meet and how to help the care-receiver access a higher level of care.

After training, the Stephen Leaders in a congregation then link the new Stephen Minister with a care receiver, a member of the congregation or community who is in a time of need.

A Stephen Minister usually is the partner for one care-receiver at a time and meets with that person once a week.

Parishioners at Our Mother of Sorrows who complete the 50-hour training process make a two year commitment of active service in the ministry after their commissioning.

Many of the current Stephen Ministry care-givers at Our Mother of Sorrows have served for more than two year. Some, like Dorothy Root, have served for more than 10 years.

Dorothy, who began Stephen Ministry in 1991, remembers when she wanted to do something in the parish, "but I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

"Then I read about Stephen Ministry in the bulletin, and I wondered if this was meant for me. I prayed over it and thought about it and the name Stephen Ministry just kept coming up," Dorothy said.

Dorothy's training experience made it very clear to her that being a Stephen Minister was not about trying to become a professional counselor, psychologist or social worker. Instead, Dorothy learned, it is about trying to understand the state of another person's being and caring enough to truly appreciate that state of being.

"Empathy is very important. We can't just sympathize with somebody. We have to learn to care in a supportive way about how their life is going or not going," Dorothy said.

"It's not about telling someone they should be doing something about their situation this way or that way or the way I think they should. It is about putting myself in that person's place and that person's life at this particular moment and being a partner with them through this time."

The ministry is definitely not about preaching to a person in crisis, Dorothy's experience has taught her, and it may not even be about praying with a person in crisis, unless that is what the person indicates that is what they want.

It is, ultimately, as Dorothy has learned, about being there.

"I have learned about the tough times that people have had to live through but still kept up their courage and their spirit. To be with different people going through different crises in their lives has helped me in going through different changes and crises in my own life," Dorothy said.

"I have just received so much from the ministry and from the care-receivers."

Sister Jeanette Mariani, O.S.F., is director of Pastoral Care and Stephen Ministry at Our Mother of Sorrows.

"Jesus reached out to those who were in need and whose spiritual illnesses were not immediately known or obvious. He was empathetic, and our goal is empathetic companionship in a relationship that has Christ in the middle, joining the two edges and healing the jagged line."

Click here to download a printable version of this article in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.

From October 2004 issue of Vision, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson in Tucson, Arizona.
Reprinted with permission.

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