Faith helps out-of-work professionals find paths

JEAN GONZALEZ | FLORIDA CATHOLIC STAFF

TAMPA | During a weekly gathering at St. Paul Parish here, participants spoke about faith and résumés in the same breath.

They are known as “tweeners” - professionals who are in between jobs - and they gather for advice, fellowship and support. Such gatherings are becoming more commonplace around Florida, as the economic crisis hits home for Catholic parishioners.

Since October, volunteers with experience in job hunting, finance, human relations and a variety of business models staff the “In Between Jobs Ministry” at St. Paul. About three months ago, a parish-based support group for unemployed professionals formed at St. Joan of Arc in Boca Raton.

Jim Kissane, a ministry coordinator at the Tampa parish who served as a professional workforce development consultant, used the framework established by a support group at a local Baptist church to develop a program, which began with more than 155 registered members.

“The whole origin of the ministry began when our clergy started seeing a significant increase through pastoral visits and through confessions of how badly people are hurting and torn from recently losing employment, or the ‘walking wounded,’ as I call them, who expect to see their job eliminated every day,” said Kissane, who was broadsided by a corporate job loss himself when his job went from five days a week to two. “I was very much able to relate to the pain and anguish those folks were feeling.”

Ellen Rasmussen was among those gathered on a recent Thursday. On April 26, she attended Sunday Mass at St. Mary Parish in Tampa and noticed a blurb in bulletin about a new ministry at St. Paul. The next day, she was unexpectedly laid off from her job of 15 years at IBM. She went home, found her bulletin and attended her first session that Thursday.

Rasmussen admitted she thought the group might be a bunch of unemployed people bemoaning their situation. The reality of the meeting offered her a pleasant surprise.

“It was positive and upbeat. They even gave me homework,” said Rasmussen with a laugh. She has only missed one meeting since then because she went on vacation. “This is helping me set priorities with my work and life balance. I worked all the time. … The meetings help me start to see this time as an opportunity to assess where I am and where I want to go.”

And participants minister to one another. Rasmussen said after a session she struck up a conversation with another participant seeking a position as a help-desk person. Rasmussen looked at his résumé and offered suggestions to make it better.

“That is a beautiful thing about this group,” Kissane said. “These are people who come to be ministered, and they support one another. They see the gifts in each other and celebrate those gifts, and show how to cultivate and put them to best use.”

The ministry also looks at individual needs.

“There are a lot of things that go on in this ministry that tear people apart. Job search coincides with marital problems, or maybe they just got the foreclosure notice,” said Kissane, who uses other parish ministries or referral services to care for members. “It breaks your heart because you can feel torment and pain.”

As a member of the St. Joan of Arc Parish Care Ministry, Victor Fontaine sees many people at times of desperate need. The ministry provides relief to people who need immediate assistance with electric bills, rent and food, but Fontaine noticed a trend among some of those in need.

“We started to get people who were highly educated people,” the Boca Raton resident said. “These are people who have had good-paying jobs. They have families and young children and mortgages. They lived a lifestyle befitting the money they were paid. Then an event takes place in their lives when they are less prepared and protected, or less able to cover their cost of living and their lifestyle and don’t have an awful lot of money in reserve.”

Fontaine described these people as being on a marathon job hunt, where they have been seeking a professional job for six or nine months or more. He knew of one professional who took his family to a soup kitchen four nights a week to provide a meal for his family because he had been out of work for so long.

“We have people come in who earned two or three degrees,” Fontaine said. It prompted him to start a pilot program for a ministry for unemployed professionals, which serves not as a job-finding service, but as a mentoring and support group. Since it began three months ago, with the full support of St. Joan of Arc’s new pastor, Msgr. Michael McGraw, Fontaine invited 16 out-of-work professionals to the ministry.

“The job search is a marathon run, not a sprint,” said Fontaine, a business and human resources professional who has been through the ups and downs of employment. “We try to tell them to take the time as a blessing, and not see themselves and what they had. We tell them see what you have achieved so far and let’s define what we want out of the rest of our lives.”

With that inspiration, one member, a mother of two teenage sons who worked throughout their lives, took the summer to postpone her job hunt and use the time to spend with her children.

Fontaine learned quickly that participants mentor one another. They empathize with feelings of loss and failure, and celebrate during moments of triumph.

“The very first meeting, I didn’t know if I would have to do most of the talking, but after I did an introduction, the participants just took over. There was so much venting, communication and affirmation among everyone,” Fontaine said. “When you are self-sufficient and confident, (a situation of unemployment) might make you lose face. When they come in, they look like deer in the headlights. If we catch them early enough so they don’t get down in dumps, and surround them with people of like stature, they might be able to move forward mentally.”