HELPING THE UNEMPLOYED

My church members were shocked when they read the Tulsa Tribune on August 20, 1986: "A part-time letter carrier who recently was told he was about to lose his job sprayed gunfire inside an Edmond, Oklahoma, post office this morning, killing 14 people and wounding 6 others before taking his own life."

Why would the threat of a job loss trigger such a massacre? we asked in our church. Could a tragedy like that be prevented? What can we do?

With renewed determination we continued our plans for a workshop for the unemployed. When it was held four days later at First United Methodist Church in Tulsa, twice as many people attended as we anticipated.

Dearly there were deep hurts among the unemployed, both within and without our congregation. But we had begun to find that as a church, working together, we could assuage those hurts and offer practical help.

Starting up

The impetus for "Jobs First," our ministry to the unemployed, came from church member Bob Johnson, who was laid ...