Outreach in a Time of Crisis: St. Michael Serves Many in the Midst of COVID-19 Closures and Beyond

This spring, the global pandemic began changing the way Americans live and work. For everyone it has been an entirely unprecedented event. While St. Michael, like all Catholic churches across the world, had to adapt to new ways of serving God’s people; one thing has remained the same — the strong faith and active discipleship of our church members is still the foundation of our Church. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, our parish leaders have provided invaluable spiritual and practical support to both members of our own faith family and the greater community.

As the Director of Social Outreach at St. Michael, Elizabeth Chanoine says Christian Connection has remained busy throughout the months of church closure and has been working on new ways to help parishioners and community members in need. As a Licensed Professional Counselor Intern, Elizabeth has been able to offer counseling to those suffering from mental health issues such as anxiety or depression, as well as serving as a counselor for our Marriage Tribunal. Other challenges in ways to provide service came when we had to suspend bringing communion to our homebound church members, who are an important part of our church family. We asked our Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion to continue to have contact with the homebound by phone, at least once a week, when they would usually be bringing Communion to them. This would provide an opportunity to talk and pray with them and express our ongoing concern for them. Even Christian Connection’s service of financial assistance have been changing too. As you can imagine, financial needs have been in high demand over the last few months. Many individuals and families in our area have been furloughed or laid off from their jobs. But this also offered more opportunities to give resources and employment leads and to offer the message of hope for a change in the situation.

Christian Connection assists residents of Bedford and Euless, as well as the parishioners of St. Michael Catholic Church. We have seen more people coming for help, and more people needing large amounts of help. We talked to someone earlier in the summer who needed rent for March, April, and May, and was still unemployed. Normally we help with a smaller portion of the rent, but this case required a sizable amount of assistance to keep them from being evicted. We had to get agencies to work together with us to meet the need. Our regular people, who live on a tight fixed budget also must be gently and carefully helped. They may have been doing fine, and then all the sudden they have been laid off or have become ill. The situation suddenly becomes very uncertain for them.

In the midst of this crisis, Christian Connection has been working on a bigger plan for help. Elizabeth Chanoine and June Jovero have been working to facilitate an Employment Roundtable with other local organizations, such as 6 Stones, Career Solutions, the City Planner from Euless - Mike Collins, HEB Transit and staffing agencies. The goal of the Employment Roundtable is to help the agencies work more efficiently together for prompt job placement for our unemployed. There are many jobs available and there is good reason to remain optimistic. The solution is for us to help the job seeker be more effective looking for a job and we need to provide additional job training and/or certification when needed. Our Employment Roundtable can do this. It is all about increasing self-sustainability.

To learn more about outreach and counseling services provided in our parish and in the surrounding area, please contact Elizabeth Chanoine, at 817-510-2734 or echanoine@smcchurch.org, or visit www.smcchurch.org/christian-connection