To read “Statistics support challenges of job searching,” find this article at www.thelutheran.org/feature/september.


Finding


Congregation’s support group helps one another find jobs


By S.W. Senghor


together W


We were unemployed. More than a year ago, five of us began to meet,


endowed with little more than a name (Meaningful Work Group) and a key to our church, Christ Lutheran in Washington, D.C. So we began that morning, warily, by simply introducing ourselves and telling our stories. Just months before, one of us who had been search-


ing for work approached our pastor, Renata Eustis, to ask: Weren’t there others in similar circumstances? Why not start a support group? When we met, we were astonished to discover that


we’d each felt bullied out of our last jobs for taking a stand on an important issue and had, curiously enough, found ourselves feeling unsupported by our partners or marriages. How empowering to discover we weren’t alone.


30 www.thelutheran.org


meaningful work


e knew each other by sight—some of us, even by name. But we had no idea that we were each at sea, adriſt on our own boats. Te church community should have been a place to let our hair down and be ourselves, to gather and say, “I’m


struggling with this. I need help, and I need prayer.” But six days a week we inhabit a world that prizes individualism and self-sufficiency, so we were embarrassed.


We talked candidly, listened attentively, accepted


help, lived and loved boldly, and advocated aggres- sively—not just for ourselves but on behalf of each other. In community, what we’d been unable to do for


ourselves we suddenly were able, with wit and wisdom, to do for each other. Inspired by Matthew 5:13-20 (“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?”), we began demonstrating our belief in the outstanding talents each other offered and set about helping recast our stories in a positive and powerful light. Peggy Klaus’ Brag! Te Art of Tooting Your Own Horn


without Blowing It (Warner Business Books, 2004) was a helpful guide. We set about helping rewrite each other’s résumés


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