What do stephen ministers do

A 1: They provide distinctive Christion caregiving…the care is all about Christ helping people through people. A 3: Contact Pastor Ed Briggs at ed. A 6: At Weddington United Methodist Church, our mission is to fulfill our call to be the physical presence of Jesus Christ by worshiping God with passion, intentionally growing in faith, proclaiming the gospel with grace, and humbly serving in love. Stephen Ministries at Weddington is one of the ways we work to fulfill this mission.

A7: The biblical basis is about having a fellow Christian walk with you through tough times… Romans For more information on Stephen Ministry, contact Rev.

Ed Briggs. Stephen Ministry. Welcome to Church of the Redeemer! We invite and welcome ALL to join us in worship and community.

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Your financial commitment is a response to the work that God is doing with you here. It is a practical way to ensure that others are able to experience the relationships of holy connection and communion that are shaping your life. For , we ask that you make your commitment through regular scheduled electronic giving, if possible.

Whether it be weekly or annually, giving electronically is a safe and sustainable way to ensure your continued financial support. Although my commitment as a Stephen Minister is for two years, the Stephen Ministry at our church ended at the end of December I was the only remaining Stephen Minister who still had a care receiver.

Our Stephen leader had changed churches, and I was alone, with no further official help. I had to tell my care receiver that I would be her friend, but I was no longer her official Stephen Minister. So, for the past three months, that's how it's been. If you are thinking of becoming a Stephen Minister at your church, here are some things you should know.

Stephen Ministries is an international organization to administer and assist distinctively Christian caregiving. It controls every aspect of the training so that it is uniform from state to state and even from country to country.

When you become a Stephen Leader or Stephen Minister, you are, in effect, becoming a small part of a very large organization, and if you don't like conforming to official procedures, you will often be frustrated, especially during training. Every local church ministry uses the same training manuals and reads the same materials. Every Stephen Leader will also use official training materials and is not supposed to depart from them.

Members of my training class were all pretty experienced in ministering to people. Some of the exercises we had to go through were aimed at absolute beginners and for our group were almost a waste of time. It sometimes felt as though we had come to a creative writing class and they first had to teach us the alphabet and the Dolch list of sight words before letting us actually start writing.

There was not a person in training who had not weathered a lot of personal storms. There was not a new Christian in the bunch. That's not to say that the training was not useful. It's just that it would have been more valuable if we had been allowed to spend more time at the secondary than at the elementary level of our discussions and training instead of following every part of the manual outline and exercises.

I realize that some training classes may have many people who need to start with the elementary principles and I'm not knocking that. I just wish our leader had been able to be more flexible so the training would better meet the needs of our particular group. I will be writing another hub that covers the actual training of a Stephen Minister.

Meanwhile, if you want to see parts of an actual training session and learn more about the Stephen Ministry, you can watch the video on Stephen Ministry on the PBS site. First, your church has to have a Stephen Ministry. If it doesn't, maybe you can talk to your pastor and see how your church leadership might feel about starting it. It's a huge commitment for a church, as well as for people participating as Stephen Leaders and Stephen Ministers. Our church was not able to keep a two-year commitment to the program.

It simply wasn't large enough to have enough human resources to keep it going when our Stephen leader moved. My previous church was starting a program when I moved 17 years ago. They no longer have a program, but I don't know why. It is more likely that a larger church will have the necessary resources than a small church. If your church has an active program and you'd like to be a Stephen Minister, talk to your pastor or the Stephen Leaders and see if they will accept you into the next training program.

I hope I've given you an idea of the commitment you would be making to a group and a person who wants your help. If you decide to go ahead, God bless you. You can make a difference.

That's okay I really enjoyed your hub