Opportunities to serve others, experience personal growth and develop friendships. Team members unite efforts in caring for others within our faith community through home visits, meals, telephone calls, cards and transportation needs.
The 75-member One Body Response Team was developed in 2010 to provide St. Georgians with the care good neighbors give. One Body members show they care when they: lend a helping hand in an emergency, run an errand, touch base with someone by phone or with a visit, provide a hot meal, remember an important anniversary with a card or call, or transport someone to an appointment or to church.
One Body members serve one year at a time. Members can renew as often as they like. Because we began the program in March 2010, our year runs March to February. The 75 members are divided into 7 teams, each headed by a captain.
The One Body coordinator oversees the flow of communication regarding parishioner need. Our means of communication is by internet, so all members must be able to access email regularly. Notice of need originates with the clergy and/or the church office, gets funneled to the coordinator and is then passed along to the team captains, who in turn pass it along to team members. Each team is identified by a particular color and is ideally composed of members from as wide a variety of locales as possible so we are able to effectively answer needs.
Each team will be on call one week out of every seven. The weeks run from Wednesday to Tuesday. The entire year’s rotating calendar is emailed out, so that team members can plan ahead to be available. Captains are asked to get to know their team members and their schedules of availability. If illness, vacation or unusual demands of work or family prevent anyone from serving that week, members can aim to help another time.
At the beginning of a team’s duty week, the captain is notified by the coordinator, via email, with information regarding any parishioner needs. The coordinator continues to update the captain throughout the week if needed. When needs arise, the captain simply passes along the info to the team members. Ideally, the captain and team members will review the needs list and decide if they can do something that week to meet the need. The member need not report back to the captain once they have taken action unless they wish or have some useful info to share with other members or the clergy or if they think additional action should be taken that week or the following week with the next team. Remember: The aim of the One Body Team is to support our clergy and serve our community when we can. We will never insist that every need is met.
We don’t provide child care or babysitting per se, or nursing care, such as dispensing medication, lifting, assisting to the bathroom and other types of patient handling, for obvious reasons. That is the job of professionally licensed health care providers.
If you would like to join a team or need more information, contact Kate Hardy, One Body Response Team Coordinator.