WHITTIER, CA (ANS) — A Southern California church has launched a new faith-based initiative to help local people find jobs during this difficult time of recession.

According to Ryan Carter, Staff Writer for the Whittier Daily News, Whittier Area Community Church has launched a unique “Jobs Quest” Program, and “are finding hope, not necessarily in headhunters, but in a higher power: their faith.”

Carter said that each Monday since last spring, the church’s Job Quest Ministry has held “what is essentially a job mixer and workshop for a core of 10 to 20 men and women, young and old, who find themselves without jobs.

“With the help of guest speakers,” he continued, “they hold mock interviews, exchange notes on the job market, enhance and critique them and learn how to give seven-second elevator speeches, all under the church’s blessing.”

Glen Peterson, one of about six church congregants who started the ministry, said, “We want to give people hope and faith. I wouldn’t say we are explicitly religious in what we do. Our focus is on how regular people find the jobs they are looking for.”

Carter went on to write that “at a time of growing unemployment in Los Angeles County, the time was right to go beyond benevolent giving to the poor and actually start a church task force, where people without jobs could learn skills to land a new job, organizers said.”

John Gibson, a co-founder and chairman of the group and a real estate developer and banking industry veteran whose company collapsed in the now two-year-long recession, said, “What evolved was the continued need to provide not only the training (to get a job) but the emotional support.”

Martin Chavez, of Whittier, came to rely on the group’s support. The single father of three with house payments to make was laid off last year after 14 years.

With no job leads, “things were getting tough,” said Chavez, who is a parishioner at the church.

Chavez joined the ministry early on.

Carter continued by saying that there was no immediate job with the ministry’s help, but it was a way to find support and find solutions, he said.

Still, weeks went by, and no job. Finally, after about three months, he found work – a good job, he said, that uses his engineering skills.

“Without the emotional support, I wouldn’t have made it through,” he told the writer.

For Chavez, the ministry is unique. It’s unlike the other mixers, where the environment is a bar or cantina, he said. The faith component was a way for job seekers to unite over a lead or concept they can share. And if they need more support through prayer, they can get it.

“It’s funny … we all seem to get closer to an almighty, a god, when we’re the most vulnerable,” he said, adding that he still comes back on Mondays to share advice or help.

Carter said, “About 80 percent of the attendees on Monday are church members, but you get what you come for. If people are discouraged and need spiritual support, they can get it if they want it, Peterson said, adding that you won’t get ‘ambushed.’

“Instead, they might get some useful information from people like the list of speakers who will be guests at the ministry’s second Job Search & Career Workshop, to be held from 8 to 12:30 p.m. March 20, at 8175 Villaverde Drive, Whittier.”

Peterson said, “I really enjoy this. There’s really a sense of joy in helping other people.”

The ministry’s Web site is at www.jobquestministry.net.

Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC., and now hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on KWVE in Southern California and which is also carried on the Calvary Radio Network throughout the United States. Wooding is the author of some 43 books, two of the latest being From Tabloid to Truth and God’s Ambassadors in Japan.