Centerpointe Care Connects train lay persons to come alongside those in need. They learn to offer a non-judgmental ear, a compassionate shoulder and much heartfelt prayer. The breadth of ministries includes formally ordained Deacons, intensively trained Stephen Ministers, and specially called Care ministers. Their cycle on service can range from arranging for meals, errands, or transportation to investing an hour over a cup of coffee to committing to meet for an hour a week for up to a year.

If you or someone you know finds themselves:

• experiencing the loss of a loved one
• battling a terminal illness
• enduring hospitalization, nursing care
• experiencing marital separation, divorce
• involved in a traumatic accident
• isolated with loneliness
• coping with relocation
• exhausted by elder care
• damaged by physical/emotional abuse
• facing life changes/loss in general (aging, health, coping)
• managing birth of child, parenting challenges
• addressing aging children (leaving for college, military, marriage)

Centerpointe Care ministers are called by God to extend Christian care for up to several months to those who are in the midst of trial and stress. Ministers are specially trained to provide caring, confidential, and non-judgmental listening and support. Their role of care giver allows them to accompany and support their care receiver through difficult times.

Level of Preparation, Commitment, and Frequency of Care

Stephen Minister
• 2 year active role
o 6 months covering 50 hours small group training
o 18 months readiness to care or engaged in a care giving relationship
• Monthly small group meetings where prayer, advice, and counseling is provided
• Weekly meetings one-on-one with assigned care receiver

Deacon
• 3 year active role
• Monthly small group meetings
• As available to orchestrate support services to those in need

Centerpointe Care Minister
• 1 year active role
o 1 month covering 10 hours small group training
o 11 months readiness to care or engaged in a short term care giving relationships
• Monthly small group meetings where prayer, advice, and counseling is provided
• As needed meetings one-on-one with assigned care receiver
• Curriculum
o Care Ministers will meet for two five hour sessions covering topics like Caring for
Those Who Grieve, Reflective Listening, Maintaining Confidentiality, Knowing When to Escalate, Maintaining Healthy Boundaries, Empathy, Sympathy, and Over Identification.

If you are interested in serving as a Care Minister, please contact the church office to learn when the next training classes are scheduled.

JUST ONE – ONE billion people live on less than ONE dollar a day.

With Fair Trade, we get things we need and people in developing countries get dignified work that helps break cycles of poverty and dependency. Just one Fair Trade purchase by every churchgoer in America this year would lift one million families out of this poverty for one whole year.

Centerpointe and Trade as One believe that good business should do good, be transparent, and enhance life on this planet. Trade as One seeks to alleviate two extremes: the poverty that defines much of the developing world and the empty consumerism that has left much of the developed world bereft of meaning and purpose.

What is Fair Trade?

Fair Trade is an alternative approach to conventional trade and is based on a partnership between producers and consumers. Fair Trade offers producers in developing countries a better deal, improved terms of trade and the opportunity to improve their lives and stay out of poverty or abuse. Fair Trade offers consumers a powerful way to make a positive impact through their every day shopping.

When a product carries the Fair Trade mark it means the producers and traders have met Fair Trade standards. The standards are designed to address the imbalance of power in trading relationships, unstable markets and the injustices of conventional trade.

How can I purchase Fair Trade Certified products through Trade as One and other Fair Trade organizations?

You can view products and make purchases through their websites such as tradeasone.com, tenthousandvillages.org, twohandsworldshop.com, globalexchangestore.org and more.

You may also find a listing of local Bay Area businesses that sell Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate at transfairusa.org.

If you would like to learn more about Trade as One, please contact Claudia Wanlin.

A lot goes into bringing the worship services on Sunday morning together, and right now I am looking for people that have a heart to serve and are up for a challenge.  There are open auditions for singers and musicians, and I am interviewing for the media team that brings it all together through sound, visual, and lighting.  If this peaks your interest and you would like more information, I would like to hear from you.  Please contact me at brian.marriott@centerpointeweb.org or call the church office and ask to speak with me.