From the Bible Belt to the Gucci Belt

At the corner of Madison Avenue and Seventy-first, just a few steps from the Yves Saint Laurent boutique, sits St. James' Church. For 195 years on Manhattan's tony Upper East Side, it has served an Episcopal congregation so influential and so wealthy its collection plates alone receive almost $12,000 each month.

St. James' is a most unlikely refuge for the broken and the lost. Yet within its stone walls, a free, volunteer, peer-to-peer counseling service ministers to the reserved, intensely private parishioners. Based in Christian faith -- although it does not rely on, or require, use of the Bible -- it creates a therapeutic dialogue that gets its power not least from its lack of a power divide. Care receivers and givers speak across an unusually level playing field -- both equal before God, both humbly cognizant they might one day trade places.

St. James' is one of thousands of outposts of the Stephen Ministry, an organization of more than 450,000 trained laypeople, including 36 at St. James', who offer help within their congregations in the U.S. and Canada. Founded in 1975 by St. Louis psychologist Kenneth Haugk and his late wife Joan, a psychiatric nurse and clinical social worker, it trains "servants, listeners, and caring Christian friends." The group takes its name from the first layperson commissioned to assist the pastors in the early Catholic Church.

Stephen Ministers are not mental health professionals, and they are supervised only by fellow Ministers. But they are forbidden to counsel minors or those with eating or personality disorders, substance abuse or severe depression. That still leaves room for the pained, the stressed and those in troubled marriages.

"It's about two Christian people coming together," explains Susan Johnson, 31, a parishioner who has participated in faith-based counseling, and a Stephen Minister. "We're struggling and we've all been there. It's a part of my faith to be there for you." Johnson was 27, new to New York City from North Carolina, depressed and yearning for spiritual connection. She met with a Stephen Minister while also undergoing secular Jungian therapy. She received care for eight months, praying aloud, exploring her relationship with God. "What did I need to pray for? I got into this not being sure at all."

Today she knows. "It wasn't until I became a Stephen Minister that I realized it's someone going to God on my behalf, someone who will pray with me."

Those who choose Stephen Ministry appreciate its significant differences from secular therapy. "It is powerful and healing for people to be cared for and prayed for by someone who has no obligation to them," says Reverend Brenda Husson, who introduced Stephen Ministry to St. James' in 1999. "It comes and is received for what it is -- a gift, and an expression of God's openhanded love."

Stephen Ministers make a two-year commitment to the program. One-on-one relationships with each care receiver, always of the same sex, usually last six months. If no endpoint is visible, other supervising ministers ask why.

As in conventional psychotherapy, confidentiality is expected and maintained. But more is required. "It's a commitment to the truth that every person is a beloved child of God, regardless of what people may be going through at a particular time," says Husson. "Many of the skills can be taught -- effective listening, managing anxiety, knowing when to get help, learning to pray out loud extemporaneously -- but you have to start from a sense that each person you will work with is precious in God's sight." Acceptance alone can be healing.

St. James' parishioner Betsey Steeger, 68, never intended to become a Stephen Minister. "I came to church regularly, said my prayers and went home. I was not high-profile and thought I had no interest in pastoral care. But [my clergy] saw something in me that I had no idea was there."

As a Stephen leader, Steeger attended an intense, weeklong training session with 400 to 500 would-be ministers, one of six such events held annually.

Nancy Streeter, 76, was ready to bail out -- so great was the culture shock for her and two other St. James' parishioners at a session in San Antonio. "We New Yorkers came in very skeptical, and they were very skeptical of us. We were in the Bible Belt. We felt like fish out of water."

Emotionally intense and intellectually demanding 15-hour days challenged these normally restrained Episcopalians. "It was overwhelming. Role-playing! It terrifies me," says Streeter.

No matter how private the relationship between caregiver and receiver, the trust and growth it fosters can also transform a congregation. "The benefits are enormous," says Husson. "Caregivers work with people they don't know. The program is a reminder: What joins us to one another is we are all redeemed by the love of God in Christ. That bond transcends the bonds of friendship or shared background." On Madison Avenue, at least, the connection transcends wealth and privilege as well.

Caitlin Kelly, based in Tarrytown, New York, is author of Blown Away: American Women and Guns (Pocket Books, 2004).