Key points:
- The ecumenical ministry is hosting nationwide training events to equip church members to provide one-on-one support to people facing life’s challenges.
- A new initiative aims to help churches address the growing mental health crisis in their communities.
- Stephen Ministries has trained more than 600,000 people from over 14,000 congregations and organizations, including nearly 3,000 United Methodist churches.
Stephen Ministries, a national program that helps Christian lay members offer one-on-one emotional support to neighbors in need, is celebrating its 50th anniversary by hosting full-day learning events nationwide.
During the events, which draw significant United Methodist participation, the ecumenical ministry teaches Stephen Ministers how to support people suffering through grief, divorce, job loss, chronic or terminal illness and other personal crises. It is also introducing a new training and outreach initiative to help more churches address the deepening mental health crisis in their communities.
Based in St. Louis, Stephen Ministries began in 1975 and is named for Stephen, the selfless lay servant and martyr in the Bible’s Book of Acts. The ministry produces training and resources with spiritual, psychological and theological insights and research-based practicality.
While program staff provide online training to a congregation’s selected Stephen Leaders, those individuals then train and supervise Stephen Ministers within their local church.
“It’s a wonderful, motivating experience that takes a lot of planning, coordination and learning to be a team that grows stronger by serving others,” said Michele Feld, Stephen Leader team coordinator at Avon (Indiana) United Methodist Church, which hosted a regional Stephen Ministries event in April.
Her church, which has had the program for two decades, has 25 Stephen Ministers, most of whom are matched with “care receivers.” And it is getting more requests for ministers from its community since hosting the event. “I wasn’t prepared for that impact on our church,” Feld said.
Thirteen events so far, each drawing 300-600 participants from churches and communities, began in late 2025 and ended Sept. 26 in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Six more will follow in early 2027; and more may be added.
They cover topics such as:
- relating to people in distress with “the gift of empathy”;
- discovering and using one’s spiritual gifts to offer assertive caring; and
- supporting people through emotional battles with grief, illness — especially cancer — and other challenges.
Stephen Ministries reports that over 600,000 people from more than 14,000 congregations and other organizations have received its training, including nearly 3,000 United Methodist churches.
“From our start over 50 years ago,” said the Rev. Kenneth C. Haugk, Stephen Ministries founder and executive director emeritus, “we’ve been blessed to have tens of thousands of people from United Methodist congregations participate in our trainings and use our resources to bring Christ’s healing love to people in their churches and communities.”
Haugk, who created the program as a Lutheran pastor and clinical psychologist in St. Louis, retired in 2025 to focus more on research. At each event he introduces his successor, the Rev. Justin M. Schlueter, previously the director of training and a former pastor and elementary school teacher.
“We’ve heard amazing stories of how God is working through Stephen Ministry at United Methodist churches to change lives,” Schlueter said, “including pastors who first felt the call to pastoral ministry while serving as Stephen Ministers.”
United Methodist pastors have helped to spread Stephen Ministry as they moved from congregation to congregation, Haugk explained, “and their churches have been the largest denominational group at many of our training events over the years.”
The Rev. Jeff McDowell, pastor of First United Methodist Church in Horseheads, near Elmira, New York, is one of those pastors. He started the program there over two years ago, after seeing its benefits at his previous church appointment.
Like other clergy, he values the laity-led outreach that augments his pastoral care. Indeed, the Stephen Ministry motto is: “To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…” quoted from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:12).
Deb Hill, a retired business technical analyst, joined First United Methodist Church when she moved to the area, in part because of its Stephen Ministry.
“I fell in love with it at my former church in North Carolina,” she recalled, extolling the training and teamwork involved and the “non-churchy,” non-judgmental approach to doing caregiving without trying to “fix” people.
Stephen Ministers are matched with persons experiencing crises for weekly encounters to listen, encourage and provide emotional and spiritual support. The confidential relationship, which is more involved than typical church care and visitation ministries, lasts as long as the need for care exists. Stephen Ministers commit to at least two years of service in the ministry.
First United Methodist Church’s cohort is eager to add new ministers, but the extensive training — lasting up to 50 hours over several months — is often a challenge there and elsewhere.
Their seven Stephen Ministers and three Stephen Leaders traveled five hours in a van to join about 30 other United Methodists from nine churches at the Sept. 26 learning event in Haddonfield.
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Over 325 people attended the eight-hour assembly held in a Catholic high school auditorium. It began with brisk remembrances of the program’s birth and growth over 50 years. What followed were hours of presentations — informed by research and user feedback — about caring one-on-one for people in distress and despair.
Topics included: lessons from Jesus Christ about assertive empathy; how to listen and relate to people who are grieving; fostering healthy, helpful communication with boundaries; creative ideas for cancer care ministry; and supporting full-time caregivers.
But the climactic focus was on how to engage churches in addressing the nation’s growing mental-health crisis, made worse by increasing social isolation and loneliness, high suicide rates and the disruptive impact of mental illness on communities.
While professional therapists provide treatment for mentally ill persons, Haugk and Schlueter explained how churches can use Stephen Ministry principles and practices to teach and promote preventive “mental health empowerment” for individuals and communities. That empowerment would comprise development of healthy relationships, effective coping skills, emotional resilience and Christ-centered spiritual well-being.
The two leaders proposed integrating mental health empowerment strategically into sermons and Bible studies, small-group discussions, family ministries, church staff and leadership training and other contexts. All such efforts should involve research for refinement, they advised.
“We’re hoping to develop and engage many partners to creatively build a more caring world together as followers of Jesus Christ,” Schlueter said in his remarks before a closing prayer.
While The United Methodist Church does not have a denominational relationship with Stephen Ministries, the Rev. M. Scott Hughes, Discipleship Ministries associate general secretary of World Service, affirmed the independent program’s work.
“We know that it is one of the most effective peer-to-peer lay caring models in the mainline world,” he said.
Coleman is a longtime United Methodist communicator.
News media contact: Julie Dwyer, news editor, [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
