Saturday, March 8, 1997

Stephen ministers lend an ear, support to those in need

By Marc Schogol

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

"Then the twelve ... chose Stephen. ... And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people."

-The Acts of the Apostles

----

PHILADELPHIA - His 2-year-old son was dead of leukemia, and Gerry Connor was a dead man walking.

He'd gone through "six months of pure hell." His little boy's suffering was finally, mercifully over.

But Gerry Connor's just went on and on and on.

"I was up, down, in and out. ... I was being the dad and the son and the father of my other son. But I wasn't taking time to take care of myself."

Enter Quent Walsh, one of the church's "Stephen ministers."

Like Connor, Walsh is a member of the congregation at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. Like Connor, Walsh had lost a young child - in his case, to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, also known as crib death.

On top of that, Walsh had gotten cancer twice.

To say the least, Walsh knew what Connor was experiencing. And as a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran's Stephen Ministry, Walsh could offer the two things he knew Connor needed most: someone to talk to and someone to be there.

For two years, Connor and Walsh laughed and cried together. At the end of those two years, Connor was back from the dead.

And he had decided to become a Stephen minister himself so he could offer others the support and comfort and healing he had received.

After the death of Christ, according to the Book of Acts, the 12 Apostles found there was more to do than they could handle. So they commissioned lay people to provide caring ministry to those in need.

The first of those called to do this work was St. Stephen. It is for him - and in the spirit of his pastoral mission - that the Stephen Ministries was named.

The Stephen Ministries began in 1975 in a Lutheran congregation in St. Louis. As word of its success spread, other churches adopted the model. Today, more than 5,500 congregations representing more than 75 Christian denominations in the United States, Canada and 17 other countries have a Stephen Ministry.

To date, the parent group says, nearly 200,000 volunteers have been trained as Stephen ministers, providing one-to-one care to an estimated half-million people. Churches pay the St. Louis-based parent organization to have their members attend the training programs.

To become a Stephen minister, one has to go through about 50 hours of training, and make a commitment to serve for two years. Many Stephen ministers continue serving after their two-year commitment is completed.

It is not an evangelical program - Stephen ministers do not proselytize. Nor are there necessarily any religious overtones to the meetings between Stephen ministers and care-receivers. The Stephen ministers will pray with someone who wants to do so, but they don't yank people to their knees and urge them to be saved or born again.

The Stephen Ministries, whose training and support system sets it apart from other church-based people-to-people programs, does little to promote itself. People and churches learn about it primarily through word of mouth.

A good listener. That's what the Rev. Ray Scherer was saying a Stephen minister needed to be.

Scherer is pastor at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church who works with the Stephen Ministry there. He, Gerry Connor and Quent Walsh sat in a small, comfortably appointed office at the church one recent night, talking about what the program involves and what it has meant to them.

"Divorce, grief, depression, hospitalization, suicide - all kinds of things," Scherer said. "We equip Stephen ministers to be listeners. They're not there to direct people in making decisions. They're not counselors. They're there to be supportive. ...

"It's a Christ-centered program. Martin Luther talks about us (Christians) being 'Little Christs.' I think that's what this is."

The fact that the Stephen ministers are lay men and women is what makes the program work, Walsh said.

"Some people are dealing with things they're ashamed about, uncomfortable about." Problems they wouldn't want to discuss with a pastor. "We come as a friend and talk more as equals."

That's what it was for Connor. The visits from Walsh, he said, "were something I really began to look forward to. They were an opportunity to really talk about the situation."

Given all they had in common, Walsh said, "there was just a lot of connectivity. There were times when I left and I was the one crying."

Contacts are confidential. When Stephen ministers gather for their twice-monthly meetings, the names of the people they've been seeing are never mentioned.

Connor, 39, a computer consultant from Southampton, allowed his name to be used in this article because everyone in the congregation knows about his situation, and because he is about to begin Stephen ministry training himself.

Walsh, 50, a chemical-company delivery systems manager, didn't have any confidentiality concerns because he was between care-receivers.

"The person I had been working with passed away recently," Walsh said sadly. "I need a break."

But it was clear the break won't last long.