Creating HOPE in Longmont

Meet St. Stephen’s

Throughout our process of discussing who we are at St. Stephen’s, where we hope to go as a congregation, and what qualities we seek in a new rector, many parishioners repeatedly described our congregation as a “family,” with each person playing a unique and valuable role in our church family’s life together. So, in addition to describing the communal aspects of our congregation, we have decided to include several brief personal profiles of various members of St. Stephen’s to illustrate the many ways people of our congregation are living out their faith both within our church and in the world around us.

Parishioner Ann grew up with a Roman Catholic father and a mother who was a blend of Southern Baptist and Methodist. Ann was baptized in the Catholic Church, and her sister persuaded her to be confirmed as a Catholic.

“I pretty much quit going to church when I was in college,” she says. “I didn’t really go back to church until I was in my 30s when my husband and I moved from Texas to Florida. A friend who was Episcopalian suggested that joining a church in our new community would be a good way to make friends. My husband had grown up in the Presbyterian Church, but since I didn’t want to be Presbyterian and he didn’t want to be Catholic, we tried the Episcopal Church, and we both felt comfortable there for the four years we spent in Orlando.”

In 1990, Ann’s family, including an 8-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter, moved to Longmont, where they joined St. Stephen’s just as Father Ralph Evans was leaving for a church in Florida. “The Sunday Father Ralph announced he was leaving, he also announced that the Colorado Diocese wanted to start another ‘mission’ church in Longmont, called Road to Emmaus,” she recalls. “We went there for about 1–1/2 years before it folded because it was not self-sustaining. We returned to St. Stephen’s. Those were the ‘boom years’ of Sunday School at St. Stephen’s. We had to add an education wing because we were bursting at the seams.”

Ann became involved with the Outreach Committee, which she served as chair for some time. “We contributed to international, diocesan and local groups, but we also encouraged the congregation to work within the community,” she says. “We became the coordinators of the Holiday Basket Program that was created under the Saint Vrain Community Council, a networking group of nonprofits in Longmont. St. Stephen’s did a lot of visible work with that program, creating food and gift baskets for needy families during the holidays.”

Then Longmont experienced five major blizzards in December 2006 and January 2007.

“Those blizzards gave rise to recognition of the extent of homelessness in our community, which was the impetus for creating Homeless Outreach Providing Encouragement (HOPE) for Longmont,” Ann notes. “We had street outreach workers from Boulder in the fall of 2006, but that brutal winter clearly showed a need for our own program in Longmont.”

HOPE was incorporated as a nonprofit in May 2007, and Ann was a founding board member. The program has changed over the years, and it now coordinates efforts with other organizations in a “coordinated entry program,” conducting official social worker assessments of people’s needs for services with the ultimate goal of getting people off the streets.

Although she is no longer on the HOPE board, Ann continues to volunteer, working on street outreach, fundraising and other projects. “I have always had a passion for social justice issues,” she explains. “I believe we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.”