Covenant

Committee members contribute to our mission through many roles which include mentoring individual families and in other roles to support the work of the committee.  Mentors support individual families in partnership with a family caseworker from Episcopal Community Services.   Committee roles are many and varied including indirect family support and assistance in program-wide roles including holiday gatherings and assembling Back-to-School backpacks.

We meet at The Cathedral monthly or bimonthly on the first Tuesday at 5:30 PM, usually in the Library.  Mentorship usually involves less than an hour per week.  Other roles vary according the nature of ongoing and time-limited projects.  Please call or contact a committee member before attending a meeting for the first time to confirm time and location. 

Please contact Melody Herbst at 612-813-1563 if interested or simply curious.  There are many ways to participate in this ministry in communion with committee members and the families we are privileged to know and serve.

The Covenant program is a unique form of outreach at St. Mark's that gives parishioners direct connections to those we serve by pairing our ministry with a professional program offered through Episcopal Community Services (ECS).  Parishioners who volunteer as Covenant mentors make a one-year committment of partnership with a family enrolled in the ECS program.  Partnership families establish goals for themselves and receive financial support through Covenant.  While ECS provides professional family casework services during the family’s enrollment, St. Mark's Covenant provides a mentor, as well.  Mentors walk with the family as friends and advocates for twelve months, offering companionship and encouragement during their journey toward self-sufficiency and stability.  Although the Covenant Program has committee members who have served the program in many ways, it is often a challenge to find someone willing to mentor a family.  If you are willing to add a relationship beyond your circle of family and friends, willing to listen, and willing to be a link to ECS and St. Mark’s Covenant Program, you can be a mentor.  As required for participation in the program, mentees agree to allow an unknown mentor into their lives; this is a tremendous act of trust on their part.  A wonderful way to return that trust is to share twelve months of our lives with them as mentors.

The formal commitment of a mentor involves weekly telephone conversations with the mentee, and a face-to-face meeting approximately once a month (coffee, ice cream, picnics, etc.).  But this can involve much more if you wish.  For example, mentors may assist with applying to college or jobs, or rides to medical appointments. 

The St. Mark's Covenant group generally meets the first Tuesday of each month at 5:30, usually in the library.  The group discusses program needs and the progress of each of the families participating in the program.  The meetings also provide an opportunity for mentors to get support and feedback from other Covenant members, including mentors. 

Mentoring is not about showing others how to live, or steering their decisions.  Since participants in the program work closely with ECS caseworkers, mentors don't work in any sort of "professional" manner.  Therefore, any individual or couple who would simply like to be a friend and advocate to someone who is working to rebuild or redirect his/her life is qualified to mentor.  Mentors form relationships with someone they've never met before, and with whom they may seemingly have very little in common, but mentoring is a lot like other relationships.  It involves sharing oneself and listening, as well as being understanding, encouraging, open-minded, and patient for the other. 

Mentoring is an experience that most people are unlikely to have elsewhere.  While many mentors begin the process believing their life experiences to be radically different than those of their mentee, mentoring shows them that in fact they have experienced similar life circumstances, but experienced them in an entirely different way due to various social factors.  Whatever the nature of a mentor/mentee relationship, it is one that can be as nourishing and enlightening for mentors as it is for mentees.  Some mentors remain in touch with their mentees long after their formal involvement in the program, others serve for one year and leave it at that.  Some mentors never become very close to their mentees, but they still gain a lot through the experience.

“My mentee is a strong person and a wonderful mother.  Although I have considered myself to be an open-minded person before I began mentoring, meeting my mentee and her family has opened my eyes beyond my preconceived ideas and taught me a great deal”

Moves for a Covenant family are expected; the moving situation for each family is unique.  As a mentor, I was grateful to have the opportunity to help address immediate needs of the family as they take steps to gain adequate affordable housing.”

“Like any relationship, there are ups and downs, moments where trust and loyalty are tested, and both happy and sad times.  Sharing my time as a mentor has revealed even more clearly all that I have to be grateful for, some of which, I’m ashamed to say, I many have previously taken for granted.”

“The move to a new home was the first challenge, but we did it together, even painting the kitchen and planting donated perennials in the front of the house.  You bond and collect memories with these efforts made together.”

“I encourage you to prayerfully consider becoming a mentor.  It is an enriching way to spend one year of your life, a responsibility that should not be taken lightly, and is rewarding for mentors and mentees alike.  Not only may you positively contribute to the life of another, but he or she will likely do the same for you if you watch, listen and wait.”

“I hope you will choose to join Covenant by being a mentor.  It has been a wonderful experience for me.  Covenant is the essence of community with others, both as mentor to a family and in relationship with other members of the committee.”

“It was a pleasure to celebrate my mentee’s daughter’s birthday with her family and friends.”

Have questions about St. Mark's Covement Ministry or Mentorship?
Contact Melody Herbst at 612-813-1563.