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Senior Moments: "Caring Community" of St. Luke's, Montclair models successful inreach

Susan Singer
By: 
Susan Singer

Imagine that you are living alone, active, and fiercely independent. Imagine further that one fine winter day you take a bad fall on the ice, and end up with a painful injury. The long-range prognosis is good, but for the next several months you cannot drive, stoop or lift anything over ten pounds. You can’t drive yourself to a medical appointment. You can’t hop over to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. You can’t even pick up a grocery bag. Literally overnight you have been deprived of the social interaction that comes with your job or your charitable work. You may feel lonely or vulnerable. And, just when you most need the spiritual lift of church, you can’t even get to services on your own.

It was such “real life” experiences which led a small group of parishioners at St. Luke’s Church in Montclair to form a new ministry: the Caring Community. Our Caring Community aims to lend practical support, provided by volunteers within our congregation, to fellow parishioners suffering from illness or injury. The types of help may be food shopping, delivery of cooked meals, neighborhood errands, or a ride to the doctor’s office or to a church service. We have found that one size does not fit all. Caring Community volunteers have delivered plants and cookies to hospitalized congregants, given simple computer advice, even organized an ailing parishioner’s papers. We have also helped make connections outside the Caring Community’s “official” boundaries, for example, linking a homebound parishioner with the Eucharistic Visitor ministry.

Early in its formation, St. Luke’s Caring Community found a useful resource in a secular model developed by the Transition Network, a national non-profit organization. That model, called “Caring Collaborative,” involves an explicit exchange, in which a person signs up both to give and to receive support in the event of temporary illness or injury. The Caring Collaborative manual, which can be accessed at www.thetransitionnetwork.org, provides “how to” guidance for gauging the needs and capacities of a particular group and for developing procedures for the delivery of services.

Unlike secular mutual support groups, however, St. Luke’s Caring Community operates on the “Good Samaritan” principle, rather than on a barter system. Before launching the Caring Community, we therefore had to address two questions: (1) what services would congregants perform without any promise of in-kind reciprocation?, and (2) what services would congregants accept, knowing that they might not ever be able to provide similar services?

To find out, we distributed questionnaires to all members of St. Luke’s. One side of the questionnaire asked the respondent to check off which, if any, of a series of specific tasks he/she would be willing to perform for a congregant in need of help. The flip side of the questionnaire asked which of those services the congregant would accept. (If you would like to receive a copy of this questionnaire, please send an email request to caring@slechurch.org.)

We were delighted to receive close to 40 questionnaires indicating a willingness to do at least one, and in most instances multiple, types of service. Although fewer people filled out the flip side of the questionnaire regarding willingness to accept help, our seed group of volunteers, who manage the requests and insure fulfillment of the need, felt we had a sufficient basis to proceed. In deciding to move ahead, we were also encouraged by conversations we had with folks involved in two other church-sponsored service ministries in northern New Jersey: “Lifeline” of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Gladstone and “In a Pinch” of St. Cassian Roman Catholic Church in Montclair.

To implement the Caring Community at St. Luke’s, we have formed a lead team whose members fill four roles:

  • Pastoral Advisors/Clergy provide confidentiality guidelines and advice when sensitive issues arise.
  • Coordinators interface with clergy and other St. Luke’s ministries to identify parishioner needs, and match parishioners needing a service with corresponding volunteers.
  • Project Managers develop systems for making service requests, for relaying requests to coordinators, and for retrieving volunteer contact information.
  • Communication Leads design graphic materials such as a brochures, flyers, and material in the Sunday bulletin, create imaginative ways to communicate about the Caring Community during announcements at services, and organize special events that encourage participation and suggestions, particularly from our seniors.

To date, the Caring Community’s biggest challenge has been to overcome the reluctance of parishioners to ask for help, perhaps for fear that they might be unable to return the “favor.” In fact, Caring Community volunteers do not feel they are doing “favors.” They have found that those whom we serve also serve and strengthen us, through insight about life and faith, examples of fortitude, or simply shared presence.

If you would like to share experiences in your church with a ministry similar to the Caring Community, or trade tips about meeting challenges, or discuss a fledgling effort in your congregation to create a ministry with some of the same features, we would be happy to talk to you. Just reach out through caring@slechurch.org.