ELIZABETH (speaking in Stephen Ministry training session): I just don’t know what to do.

DEBORAH POTTER, correspondent: Sometimes you just need someone to listen.

ELIZABETH: I just don’t know how to resolve this in my head. I’m just really upset. I can’t forgive myself.

POTTER: Sometimes you need something more—a hand to hold, and maybe a prayer.

PAMELA (praying with Elizabeth): Dear Lord, Thank you for watching over all of us today. In your name we pray.

ELIZABETH: Amen. Thank you. I feel so much better.

POTTER: At Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, parishioners are training to become caregivers.

STEPHEN MINISTRY TRAINEE: The key thing that I saw is you leaned into her. You engaged her and told her, “I’m listening to you.”

POTTER: They’re learning to be Stephen ministers, named for Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr who cared for the poor. Parishioners are recruited and interviewed by the pastor, then trained to offer one-to-one care to people in and around their congregation. They commit to be available as needed for two years, but many serve longer. Pam Montgomery has been involved for two decades, balancing Stephen Ministry with responsibilities at home. But sometimes the caregiver is the one who needs care.

PAM MONTGOMERY (Stephen Minister): This is my dad and my mom.

POTTER: Seven years ago, Pam’s father died of cancer. Just two weeks later she lost her grandmother. As she grappled with her grief, a friend surprised her with a suggestion: What if Pam herself asked for a Stephen minister?

MONTGOMERY: When you’re so close to it I didn’t even think about me having one, and that Stephen minister was the best gift I could have given myself. She came week after week after week when other people, even my wonderful neighbors, even my wonderful friends, stopped asking, “You doing okay?” She came and she prayed for me, just for me, and that’s really powerful.

REV. KENNETH HAUGK (Founder, Stephen Ministries): When a person allows you into their life and shares their feelings and their hurts with you, they are giving you a fantastic gift, and I think when you listen to them and when you accept their feelings and when you love, share Christ’s love to them, you are giving them a similarly powerful gift.

Rev. Kenneth Haugk

POTTER: Kenneth Haugk started Stephen Ministries in 1975, when as pastor of a church in St. Louis he found he just couldn’t do it all. So drawing on his background as a clinical psychologist, he enlisted and trained a handful of lay people to offer confidential care to their fellow parishioners. And then it spread, becoming a nonprofit juggernaut.

Good Shepherd is one of 10,000 congregations around the world where parishioners serve as Stephen ministers. More than 150 Christian denominations have adopted the program.

HAUGK: Christianity is not a spectator sport. It was never intended to be a spectator sport. God gave to the church apostles, evangelists, and pastors and teachers whose job is to equip the saints for ministry.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): How did it feel to have your confession treated in that way?

POTTER: Stephen ministers go through 50 hours of instruction and practice, learning to help care receivers express their feelings, to listen without judging, and how to bring faith and the Bible into the conversation.

ALLAN (speaking in training session): Can we pray? Dear God, give Rene the absolute confidence of his forgiveness…

POTTER: They also study specific situations, like dealing with grief and divorce. But Stephen ministers are not counselors, so they also learn when to call in professional help from a pastor or therapist. Their work is supervised at the parish level, and if a care-giving relationship doesn’t work out, which does happen sometimes, either party can be reassigned.

Good Shepherd’s senior pastor, David Sloop, introduced the program here in 1987.

REVEREND DAVID SLOOP (Senior Pastor, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Raleigh, NC): It took a while for people to say, instead of “I need to speak to the pastor,” to also say, “Or can I have a Stephen minister?” And that’s a cultural shift, but it did occur, and we’re grateful it did. That old Lutheran concept of the priesthood of all believers—Stephen Ministry helps you live that out.

MONTGOMERY (speaking to trainees): Consider your stewardship of a precious resource: God’s gifted people…

POTTER: To enroll in the program, parishes pay a one-time fee of about $1700, giving them access to materials and leadership sessions like this one in Orlando, Florida, where experienced Stephen ministers and pastors learn how to train more care givers back home.

JACLYN HICKS: I was a care receiver, and I tell everybody, even before I became a Stephen minister, about my experience.

POTTER: Jaclyn Hicks and her husband were struggling with infertility when her pastor at Church of the Savior United Methodist in Cincinnati suggested a Stephen minister.

HICKS: It changed my life. It changed my life just having somebody be there for you, supporting you.

POTTER: After becoming pregnant and having a daughter, Hicks became a Stephen minister herself.

Jaclyn Hicks

HICKS: It’s huge to be on the flip side, to be able to just care for someone during their time of need. It’s been a tremendous blessing, and I get, as a Stephen minister, just as much out of it as I feel my care receivers do.

POTTER: Care-giving relationships are always same-gender, and the program tends to attract more women than men. Rene Anctil of Good Shepherd wasn’t sure at first that he was cut out to be a Stephen minister.

RENE ANCTIL: I tended to rely on myself a lot, and throughout this process I’ve kind of learned that I’m truly the care giver. I’m not the cure giver, and that’s God’s part.

POTTER: While Stephen Ministry relationships are strictly confidential, Anctil’s care receiver, Ed, said we could sit in on one of their weekly sessions. They started meeting more than a year ago, after Ed’s wife died.

ANCTIL: You mentioned that your daughter mentioned to you that she thought you were depressed.

ED: Yeah, oh yeah.

ANCTIL: How did that make you feel?

ED: I don’t think I’m depressed, but you get moody once in a while. Your body wears out when you get old. You always want to do something that you can’t do. That’s the hardest part.

ANCTIL: I think I recognize God in my life a lot more than I had in the past, and a lot of it is because of Stephen Ministry. I see God working not only with my care receiver but with me, which I never saw before.

POTTER: In the 35 years since the program started, half a million people have been trained as Stephen ministers, each one touching at least one other person—and being touched in return.

ANCTIL: I’m not going to go away. I’m going to be there as long as he needs me. I don’t know where the end’s going to be, but we’re going to do it together.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Deborah Potter in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Since its inception 10 years ago, the ministry of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, has made Stephen Ministry a vital component of its continuum of care.

“The Good Samaritan” by James Lesesne Wells (1902-1995)

Union—a thriving, predominantly African-American congregation of about 4500 members—enrolled in Stephen Ministry in the spring of 2000 and sent me to a leadership training course in Orlando. When I returned to North Carolina, I conferred with Union’s pastor, Kenneth R. Hammond, and began recruiting additional Stephen leaders from the church. Six months later, Union’s first Stephen Ministry class began with nine trainees.

One of the most appealing aspects of this model of ministry is its ability to balance attention between both the spiritual and emotional needs of care receivers. Stephen Ministry trainees receive 50 hours of preparation over four months in areas such as listening non-judgmentally, managing care receivers’ feelings, practicing assertiveness, establishing boundaries, observing confidentiality, and recognizing the limits of the care they can offer. These practical skills help to establish a trusting bond between the Stephen minister and care receiver, and they also provide a superb foundation for the care receivers themselves to cope with challenging circumstances in their lives.

Because Stephen Ministry trainees are encouraged to establish prayer-partner relationships with one another, they too are formed spiritually by their work. Specific training on using scriptures when providing care and identifying ways that Christ cared for others augment the spiritual experiences Stephen ministers have as they devote themselves to what is a two-year “calling.” While Stephen Ministry is unapologetically Christ-centered, it allows space to accept care receivers at their specified point of need, which often is not articulated as faith-based. Stephen ministers can openly reflect their own Christian identity without proselytizing.

Stephen Ministry is well-suited to our congregation in Durham for theological as well as pragmatic reasons. It recognizes the inherent value of the laity in ways that have not always been emphasized historically. While traditional models of pastoral care stress the role of the pastor in shepherding the flock, Stephen Ministry complements the pastoral role by equipping the laity to work alongside the pastor and provide care to the hurting. This is especially meaningful to individuals who require ongoing attention in ways that are challenging for pastors, who often must move from one crisis to another. Stephen ministers offer countless hours of care that meet real needs. They embody what they believe is a responsibility for the hurting that is shared by clergy and laity alike.

Shared responsibility is a central scriptural and theological emphasis of Stephen Ministry, which encourages Christians to “bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). Such biblical wisdom runs counter to the messages of North American Christianity and culture, where individualism and autonomy often reign supreme. Stephen Ministry, in training and in practice, teaches the laity valuable skills for how one bears another’s burdens without ever losing sight of one’s own burdens (particularly as lay leaders share them in biweekly supervision sessions and the prayer-partner relationship).

Union’s Stephen Ministry has partnered with other ministries in our own congregation (the diaconate ministry and women’s ministry, for example) to provide education and skills to their members. It has also served our local Durham community well in multiple ways. Whenever we experience a lull in requests for care from members of our own congregation, we are able to assign Stephen ministers to organizations in the broader community. Our church has forged relationships with local homeless shelters, social service agencies, nursing home facilities, and their individual members and constituents. We have established a deeper sense of partnership and community with several local churches, collaborating on Stephen Ministry training for the past five years with Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, White Rock Baptist Church, the Congregation at Duke Chapel, Aldersgate United Methodist Church, and Westminster Presbyterian Church. This ecumenical fellowship has resulted in more efficiency in our training efforts, ready referral partners across churches, greater understanding of and respect for other denominations, and ongoing relationships with Stephen leaders and ministers that extend well beyond the training season. The Triangle Area Stephen Ministry Network has provided resources and continuing education opportunities with our counterparts in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and surrounding areas as well.

While there are aspects of Stephen Ministry that can be improved, such as greater multicultural sensitivity in training materials and more attention to meeting the needs of youth (who are not served under the current Stephen Ministry model), we remain convinced that it has greatly enriched the quality and quantity of care we provide to church and community members alike.

One of the most powerful narratives of the New Testament is the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), where the “ordinary” Samaritan lay person (rather than a member of the clergy) demonstrated care and compassion for the victimized Jew. Instead of resorting to overly spiritualized discourse, the Good Samaritan responds to the victim’s multilayered needs in a manner that brings healing and provides encouragement. This narrative underscores the importance of meeting the needs of the oppressed and marginalized in tangible ways. It broadens our understanding of who our neighbor actually is and illustrates what it means to show mercy. Most importantly for Stephen Ministry, the parable of the Good Samaritan affirms the tremendous value of the laity in joining God’s healing work, beginning with our immediate communities.

Tonya D. Armstrong is the minister of congregational care and counseling at Union Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, and adjunct assistant professor in pastoral theology at the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life.