Mountain Hope Care - A Relational Focus

Caring for each other ...

Pastoral Care is about people caring, sharing and offering support, encouragement and friendship to other people and is often associated with times of particular need.  Pastoral Care is undergirded by prayer and built on compassion, concern and love – it is about being part of a family and knowing that you are loved “warts and all.”

Pastoral Care mainly occurs through Connect (Home) Groups, other church groups and friendship links and on an ad hoc basis.  There are sometimes instances of people who needed support, directly seeking help from church members, but not everyone is willing to speak up and ask for assistance.  So these people slip through the cracks in their time of need.  Mountain Hope Care aims to remedy this.

Mountain Hope Care will provide a safety net of care ensuring that every person in the congregation is treated as significant, noticed and supported in their joys and sorrows.

The strategy on which Mountain Hope Care is based was developed in 1998 and is successfully operating in many churches.

The program depends on the willingness of people in the congregation to be coordinators and relate to, and work with a small number of other people in the congregation.

Mountain Hope Care group coordinators are prepared to put in a little extra effort to get to know other church members really well and to maintain neighbourly contact with them; pray regularly for the people in their group; refer any needs to the Pastoral Care Team if there are concerns; and to be an early warning system for alerting the team about special needs or crises in church families.  Ideally this works best when each member of the group develops caring and sharing relationships with everyone else in the group, and this ensures that group coordinator is cared for also.

Structure of Mountain Hope Care:

* People in the congregation are invited to volunteer to be Mountain Hope Care group Coordinators to care for up to 4 individuals or up to 8 individuals where a couple are joint Coordinators.

* All church attendees wanting to be involved will be placed in a Mountain Hope Care group.

* Equipping and discussion sessions will be run from time to time for anyone who wishes to attend.  The topics for these sessions are:

• Getting Started
• The Art of Affirmation and Helping
• The Art of Listening
• Visiting the Ill
• Loss and grief

* Mountain Hope Care group coordinators meet once a quarter to share ideas and support each other.