How can I request a Stephen Minister?
If you are experiencing personal difficulties and would like to request a Stephen Minister, please email or call him at (630) 654-3227 and leave a voice mail message.

What will my Stephen Minister do?

• Your Stephen Minister will meet with you regularly (up to once a week typically) in your home or at the church or a mutually agreeable location. Since Stephen Ministers are not professional counselors, they are not able to meet with couples or families.
• Your Stephen Minister will listen, offer support and encouragement, and help you express your thoughts and feelings. Your Stephen Minister will help you think about choices and options and help you set goals.
• Your Stephen Minister will pray for you and with you. Your Stephen Minister will encourage you to seek spiritual growth and healing.
• Your Stephen Minister will meet periodically for supervision with other Stephen Ministers to get support and guidance about how to provide the best possible Christian Care for you.
• Your Stephen Minister will keep your identity and your conversations in confidence. When Stephen Ministers meet for supervision, your situation may be discussed, but never your identity. Unless you’re planning to harm yourself or someone else, you can be assured your conversations will be kept confidential.
• Your Stephen Minister, when appropriate, will recommend you seek legal or financial counsel, medical care or professional counseling, or other forms of care that might be helpful in your particular situation. If you are seeing a professional counselor, your Stephen Minister may ask you to sign a "release of information" form. When you’re receiving care from more than one person, it’s important that they be able to talk together.
• Your Stephen Minister will probably not socialize or talk much about himself / herself. If Stephen Ministers have had similar experiences that are relevant to your situation, they may let you know what it was like for them and what they found helpful. But unlike ordinary friendships, your relationship with your Stephen Minister will be more one-sided. The purpose of Stephen Ministers is not to form ongoing friendships but rather to focus on helping you deal with your situation.
• When your particular difficulty has been resolved or your goals have been achieved, your Stephen Minister will talk with you about putting an end to your official Stephen Ministry relationship. Sometimes both people are interested in having an ongoing more mutual friendship.
  

How can I optimize the benefit of my Stephen Minister?

• Please make every effort to meet regularly with your Stephen Minister. When you miss appointments of have infrequent appointments; it’s hard to keep a clear focus on your work together. Please take responsibility and initiative in the relationship. Don’t always wait for your Stephen Minister to call.
• Please be honest. Your Stephen Minister is not there to judge, so please talk as openly as you can about what’s really going on and what’s really on your mind.
• Realize that you are the key. So much depends on your willingness to take on the task of growth, your faithfulness in seeking to understand painful or threatening realities, your courage to bring about change by taking steps in a positive direction. Don’t expect your Stephen Minister to somehow change you or your situation. Actively seek your own understanding and change.
• During this difficult time, pursue spiritual growth and healing through worship and prayer, through Bible and devotional reading, through confession and service to others. You can’t change and grow without God, so ask God to guide you. Seek to know his will and his purpose for you. Ask God for courage, for insight and wisdom, for healing and for strength. Seek to cultivate an attitude of hope and trust in God’s ongoing work in your life. [See Philippians 1:6] Let your prayer be that of St. Augustine: "Grant, Lord, that I might know myself and that I might know Thee." Consider too our Service of Communion and Healing Prayer on the last Sunday of each month at Christ Church of Oak Brook.
• If your Stephen Minister recommends you consider additional types of counseling or other forms of care, please do so. Stephen Ministers aren’t always able to help with all particular needs. You may need to seek out the assistance of others in addition to your Stephen Minister.
• Please realize that your Stephen Minster, while not a professional counselor, is not an ordinary friend either. Unlike professional counselors, Stephen Ministers do not have years of training and do not receive payment for their services. They seek simply to show God’s love by offering Christian care. But unlike ordinary friendships, Stephen Ministers don’t usually socialize or talk much about themselves. Please understand that their purpose is not a mutual ongoing friendship but rather to help you on your situation. Their gift to you is the freedom to focus exclusively on helping yourself. Whether the two of you ever choose to develop an ongoing friendship or not, their greatest joy is that you will have moved forward and will one day no longer need an official Stephen Minister.

For more information about Stephen Ministers, please email or call him at (630) 654-3227.