Stephen Ministry trains angels on earth
Mar. 10, 2006
NOTE: A photograph is available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMC.org Feature By Marta W. Aldrich*
In the course of two tumultuous years, Kathy Sansom experienced five major stressful life events.
After her husband died of cancer in 2002, she married a childhood friend. The marriage soured quickly and was annulled. In the midst of it all, her mother died, and Sansom moved to a new city.
"When I moved to the Houston area at the end of 2003, I was totally exhausted - emotionally, physically, every way you could think of," says Sansom, who joined Klein United Methodist Church in Spring, Texas. "I was in a new city and didn't know many people. My pastor suggested I start seeing a Stephen Minister."
Stephen Ministry is a program matching specially trained lay members of a congregation with people going through a tough time. The care receiver meets weekly with the Stephen Minister, who provides one-on-one Christian care under an organized structure of confidentiality, supervision and accountability.
"It was great," recalls Sansom of her relationship with Stephen Minister Barbara Purser. "We would meet once a week for coffee or dinner or just to talk. She would call and check on me and pray for me. Basically, I'm a very happy person inside, but having a Stephen Minister helped me over a very rough time."
Such is the mission of Stephen Ministries, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian educational organization founded in 1975 in St. Louis. Currently, more than 9,000 congregations from more than 100 Christian denominations are enrolled, with the United Methodist Church accounting for approximately one-fifth.
Slipping through cracks
Stephen Ministry is the brainchild of the Rev. Kenneth Haugk, a clinical psychologist who was associate pastor of St. Stephen's Lutheran Church in St. Louis when he saw people slipping through the cracks within his congregation because of too many needs and too few staff members.
Studying Ephesians 4:12 and God's provisions "to equip the saints for the work of ministry," Haugk (pronounced Howck) concluded that one of his pastoral roles should be to equip lay people to use their spiritual gifts to minister to others. So he developed a training program in Christian care giving, recruited and trained nine "Stephen Ministers" within his church, and matched them with people in crisis.
The impact was immediate. People began receiving the focused Christian care they needed, and Haugk had more time to perform other pastoral duties. Later, two Stephen Ministers raved that "this is good stuff" and insisted Haugk take Stephen Ministry to other churches.
"Thirty years later, we've trained over 50,000 Stephen leaders, and they, in turn, have trained over a half million Stephen Ministers," says Haugk, now 60 and executive director of Stephen Ministries. "We struck a chord because we live in a world where hurts happen and hurting people are in need of care. Parents die, people get divorced, illness strikes, all sorts of stuff.."
WWJD?
Stephen Ministry is named for St. Stephen, the first layperson commissioned by the Apostles to provide caring ministry to those in need. Stephen Ministers undergo 50 hours of training and serve for at least two years. Among other things, they develop skills in reflective listening, learn guidelines on confidentiality, and prepare to minister to people in specific situations such as terminal illness, grief and divorce. They are also trained to recognize when to refer someone to a helping professional.
Stephen Ministry is based on "incarnational theology," which means that "when you care for another person, Jesus is in that person and you are the incarnation of Jesus Christ," says Haugk.
In other words, what would Jesus do?
"If Jesus had a friend going through a divorce, he'd probably listen to them. If Jesus had a friend die, he'd cry, which is what he did when Lazarus died. This stuff is simple, but profound," says Haugk. "Sometimes in the church and certainly in society, we're not very good listeners. We tend to talk too much, myself included. We have to learn to bite our tongue and listen more. It takes discipline."
With 2,180 churches enrolled, the United Methodist Church has more churches involved in Stephen Ministry than any other denomination - a distinction Haugk attributes to United Methodist-based discipleship experiences such as DISCIPLE Bible study and Walk to Emmaus.
"I think a lot of United Methodists who become Stephen Ministers have participated in these experiences and are asking, 'Now what do I do with all this?' Perhaps Stephen Ministry is a logical step," he says.
Help in adversity
Klein United Methodist Church launched its Stephen Ministry in 1984 at the urging of its pastoral staff. "We're a 3,000-member church, so the ministers can't possibly provide one-on-one care to every single person," says the Rev. Bryan Harkness, associate pastor of congregational care. "But a Stephen Minister can be there for someone who's in the midst of a life challenge ... so they don't have to walk through the valley alone."
Sarah Carty, a Stephen Minister at First United Methodist Church in Franklin, Tenn., says she feels that she is the one blessed in her relationships with care receivers. "It's a huge honor for someone to share confidential things with you knowing that you're not going to judge them," she says. "And it's an honor to know that God is the one helping the care receiver and that I am just the hands and feet, the physical presence, of Christ to them."
For Kathy Sansom, her experience as a care receiver has led her, at age 65, to train to become a Stephen Minister. She will be commissioned this spring.
"The difference between talking to a good friend and talking to a Stephen Minister is that a good friend still can be judgmental and have a tendency to want to fix things. But that's not really what you need during a difficult time," she says. "You don't need someone to tell you what to do because, in your heart, you know. You just need someone to listen. Maybe I can be a good listener now for someone else."
*Aldrich is a freelance journalist based in Franklin, Tenn.
News media contact: Cindy Caldwell, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5132 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org