What Advice Can You Offer a Church New to Stephen Ministry?

Hi Trena, our congregation's program is also a few years old. It has been working well so far. We hope to get more involved in using this ministry in our neighbourhood. I can put you in contact with the person who administers the program for us. Let me know... Neil

 Our church is considering Stephen Ministries. What are other churches experiences? I understand there is a lot of training, but the bottom line for us is, is it worth it? 

Neil,

Yes, I would like to communicate with the person in charge.  Sorry it has taken so long to respond.  I signed up for the NetWork, but haven't gotten in the habit of checking what's going on. 

Bob, 

Yes, you are right, the Leaders' training is long (a whole week) and to be honest, I think it could be condensed.  But it is thorough and some of their people are great.  The training we then did at our church was also long--20 weeks of 2 1/2 hr sessions per week with at times considerable pre reading at home.  If you go to the Leader's training, be sure to spend some serious time finding out how SM actually works in various congregations. 

I think that every church that participates in SM needs to hear the whole story, but then figure out how it actully fleshes out in your congregation.  I think that the biggest obstacle we have is communicating the value of the support to the people and having people be willing to be vulnerable to open up to someone. 

Trena