The “Caring Hearts Ministry”?

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Longtime readers will know that a good friend of the family died this past November.  Young.  Father of four.  Involved in Scouts, a cantor, and well-known in the parish in general.  An extended circle of friends and parishioners jumped in to help with making meals for the family (especially the weeks when Ray and Betsy were travelling for treatment and grandma was staying with the kids), school lunches for the kids, and providing other kinds of help, during the months before.

And parishioners — involved parishioners at any rate — like to think of themselves as always willing to jump in, and doing so whenever the need arises.  But this “system” only works when the Person In Need is already connected into the parish in some way:  via the school, or CFM (Christian Family Movement — it’s the other major way families get involved and get to know each other besides the school), or CRHP, or another group.  If you haven’t already built these connections — because you’re new, or because you don’t have kids, or because you simply are that sort of introvert that doesn’t feel comfortable with these sorts of groups and activities — you’re SOL.  And that doesn’t feel right — for help from the community to be a reward for having gotten involved, or for being good at making friends.

Now, a couple months ago, the church newsletter that my husband (who is Lutheran, and a member at a nearby ELCA church) received had a description of a new ministry there, the “Caring Hearts Ministry”; here’s a link to the description of the ministry.  It’s described as offering “short term assistance to those in need.”  Some examples of the sort of help that’s envisioned include meals, babysitting, yardwork, computer assistance, transportation, and social outings.  The site links to an interest inventory for helpers and a need inventory for those who need help.

Would this work, in the context of a Catholic parish?  I could imagine that needs would be identified by parish staff, especially the parish nurse, or perhaps by an open invitation, not so much to ask for help so much as to identify to the staff someone else in need of help.  And, around here, people use Sign-Up Genius for everything from PADS shifts to Cub Scout activity sign-ups to school conference times, so it would seem to be easy enough to invite parishioners to provide an e-mail address to be put on a mailing list, and receive Sign-Up Genius e-mails whenever a need is identified, right?

Or maybe not.

What do you think?

What does your parish do — formally or informally — for those with these sort of needs, due to an illness or death in the family or another problem?

(The photo, by the way, is of no one in particular; you’re just meant to think of this couple as happily preparing a dish to bring over to their neighbors.)