By Gretchen Keiser

The experience of being out of work is tough and lonely – a time when the only practical help in the discouraging struggle may be a job counselor who is also trying to place many other people and who may not be able to invest much time or concern in one person’s plight.

When unemployment escalates into a family crisis, churches often get involved, bringing food or funds to pay utility bills or even the rent or mortgage.

But someone looking for a job isn’t likely to go to church to find one.

An ecumenical coalition of churches is trying to change that perception through the work of the Christian Employment Cooperative.

The main office of the CEC is at 464 Boulevard in southeast Atlanta, where the CEC rents space. Seven churches have opened up satellite offices of the CEC and have hours when people who are out of work can come in, fill out forms, get help with resumes and try for jobs that the CEC has been seeking out from employers. Three more CEC satellite offices are in community centers other than churches.

In addition, 27 other churches have assigned people who represent the CEC and make the work of the Cooperative known to employers and the unemployed in their church community.

“People turn to the churches for help” in every other life crisis, said Leon Bridges, who is the executive director of the CEC. “Why shouldn’t they look to the church when they’re unemployed?”

The CEC, whose only paid staff member right now is Bridges, is more than a year old, but after months of goal setting and planning has recently begun to move into the actual business of finding people jobs.

The Cooperative uses the already extensive network existing in any church community to try and match up people who are out of work with local employers. But there is more to the Cooperative, which tries to bring compassion and support to the unemployed and a committed effort to help them and their families.

“We want to be classified as a church – that we care and we’re going to try to use every resource to help them,” said Bridges.

The executive director has experienced many facets of the situation job-seekers face. He worked for 25 years in the corporate world, including holding executive positions where he was responsible for interviewing and hiring others. Then he worked in the field of personnel placement – helping place professional people in management jobs and helping them to perfect resumes and interview techniques.

A Methodist who is active in the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship – an ecumenical charismatic group of men – Bridges decided recently that he wanted to go into full-time Christian work. He quickly found that the Methodist Church, concerned about unemployment among its members, wanted someone to study and address the problem of unemployment. Bridges began that task, and in the process, ran across the fledging Christian Employment Cooperative.

Since their goals and objectives were the same, the Methodist Church “lent me to the CEC,” said Bridges, enabling him to try and raise funds for the CEC. In 1984, with about half the necessary funds in hand, from foundations the CEC began its first year of full operation.

In the first six months, Bridges has been able to place 66 people in jobs through the Cooperative, a figure which he regards realistically, but also with hope.

Given the tremendous number of unemployed, “placing 66 people is no outstanding number,” he said, “but to those 66 people that is a big number.”

The group has been diverse, he said, including families where both the husband and wife are out of work and job hunting and single-parent households where a woman is looking for work. Some are in need of job training to bring up their skills to a higher level and others are difficult to place because they are highly skilled and competing for fewer, highly-priced jobs. Bridges said about 80 percent of the jobs which he receives and a similar percentage of applicants are seeking entry-level, semi-skilled jobs.

He will interview each person before sending them on job interviews and, if appropriate, try to help with resumes, interview techniques and other skills that might land a job. He also has access to other programs which can provide job training. He works closely with Central Atlanta Churches, a downtown ecumenical alliance which provides a one-week preparation program for entry level jobs.

Compared with two or three years ago, unemployment is down, Bridges said, “but we’re still talking about over eight million people in this country” who are out of work.

“It’s still a tremendous problem in this area and there are still many people unemployed and hurting.

The CEC has drawn the attention of many denominations, whose individual churches may have been trying to cope with the crisis of unemployment through partial efforts. One Roswell church two years ago was carrying the mortgage payments of 40 to 50 of its families during the recession, he said.

Over the last six months, Bridges has found that it’s essential to have a “hands-on” approach every day to sustain the job search and keep up with necessary interviews.

So far the denominations primarily taking part in the Cooperative are Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Bridges has worked in cooperation with the Job Network at St. Jude'’ parish in Sandy Springs, a thriving group which provides support and practical help to the unemployed. “I take up where they leave off,” said Bridges, since St. Jude’s does not attempt to find jobs but to be of ongoing support to the unemployed and their families. However, there is no parish that has joined the Cooperative as a member yet.

A training session in August will be the next opportunity for new churches to join. Two types of involvement are possible.

The first – a representative church – would involve the commitment of a few people who are willing to explain the work of the Christian Employment Cooperative in their parish and make employment application forms available to people who are out of work. They would also be contact people in the parish for possible employers.

The second – a satellite office – goes a step further and involves more time as the church or parish sets up a small office where job seekers can come to set hours and days to fill out employment forms, get help with resumes and meet someone who will listen to their situation and provide simple counsel. No fees are charged either to those looking for work or to employers and the service is open to anyone, whether or not they belong to the particular church.

“We ask the satellite churches to support people who come through their offices if they need food, clothes, MARTA cards” or other material help, Bridges said. “I also give them a list of resources” in the city if more help is needed.

“In any event all churches can share the spiritual dimension with people,” he said.

One of the board members of the CEC, Frank Duffy, was a founder of the St. Jude’s Job Network and saw in that parish how pulpit announcements and parish support mushroomed the growth of the group. Similar support for the CEC could bring in job prospects for those out of work, he said, and the board is actively working to involve more churches and the wider business community in its endeavor. There is also a need for more financial support for the CEC, he said.

But while it is a business problem, unemployment is primarily a concern of the Christian and the church, those involved in the CEC said.

“It’s economic, but it’s a spiritual crisis you’re going through,” said Frank Duffy, who has been making that transition himself in recent yeas as he left corporate employment and began his own company.

“The business community is not equipped to talk about it,” he said. “The church can and the church can do something about it.”