Howard Jacques
office: Room SB 217, Royal Jubilee Hospital
phone: (250) 370-8207
Email: howard.jacques@viha.ca
Worship Services
Worship services at Glengarry are generally led by volunteers. There are ecumenical (interdenominational) Christian worship services held every Sunday afternoon. If you would like to read the guidelines for worship leaders, click on following link: Worship Service Guidelines
Denominational worship services (for members of a particular church or faith community) can be arranged to be held on a weekday.
If there are members of your church or faith community residing at the hospital, and you would like to hold a regular worship service for them at the hospital, please contact Chaplain Howard Jacques.
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Volunteer Opportunities
The people who live in our extended care hospitals deserve the best care that we as a society can provide. They deserve the best medical and personal care. They also deserve to have their spiritual needs met.
Some residents are fortunate enough to be visited by clergy and friends from churches or faith communities they previously attended. Many other residents depend on the Chaplain, and volunteers supervised by the Chaplain, to provide them with spiritual care.
The Chaplain and volunteers from the community lead residents in worship, talk with them about the things that give meaning to their lives, and pray with and for them. Sometimes, all a resident needs is for someone to hold his or her hand and smile.
We would all like to think that we will be well cared for in our later years. Could you give an hour or more every week or two visiting individual residents, or an hour per month helping at a worship service?
Most of our spiritual care volunteers are not clergy. They are ordinary working or retired folks. We provide training for them and equip them with the skills necessary for either making spiritual care visits to individual residents or leading worship services. Some of our volunteers choose only to do one-on-one visiting with residents. Others choose only to help lead a worship service. Yet others choose to do both.
The main skill we require is a willingness to listen attentively to residents and accept them as they are. Our volunteers do not try to change the religious views of residents.
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What Can I Do?
SPIRITUAL/PASTORAL CARE VISITING
Become one of a team of volunteer visitors trained and supervised by the Chaplain, who will assign you individual residents to visit.
You will assess the resident's spiritual needs and respond appropriately. This may involve listening, sharing your thoughts, praying or just sitting with the resident in silence for a while.
You will meet with the Chaplain and your fellow volunteer visitors once a month for fellowship and mutual support.
WORSHIP SERVICES AND HYMN SINGS
Worship services are held every Sunday afternoon and every Wednesday morning. Each volunteer worship group takes responsibility for one service per month. Start or join an existing group and you can:
- Lead the service, offer prayers, give a message.
- Distribute hymn books, turn pages for residents, sing along.
- Read from the Bible.
- Play a musical instrument.
- Bring residents in wheel chairs to and from the service.
OTHER ACTIVITIES
You can start or participate in an existing men's or women's discussion group. You can start or help with a Bible study. You can suggest an activity we haven't thought of. Be creative.
DENOMINATIONAL VISITING
If you are commissioned by your church or faith community to visit residents who belong to your church or faith community, there is much that you can do: talk with the residents; give them news of your church or faith community; bring them church bulletins, devotional books and magazines; pray with them; read aloud from your faith community's sacred writings.
Denominational visitors are supervised by the faith community that sends them, and are not part of the team of spiritual care volunteer visitors supervised by the hospital Chaplain.
I AM INTERESTED? WHOM DO I CONTACT?
If you would like to volunteer to help lead worship or make spiritual care visits at Glengarry, or learn more about volunteering, call the Chaplain, Howard Jacques, at (250) 370-8207.
Not everyone is suited to volunteer in a long-term care setting. The Chaplain will help you determine if you have the potential to do this work. Do not hesitate to call.
For information about some of the questions you would be asked if you apply to become a Spiritual Care Services hospital volunteer, click on this link: What We Need To Know About You (PDF)
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