History of PEM and EMP
By Daniel Juers, a founding director

1987
As I remember, it was after church one Sunday and I was just drifting across the basement fellowship hall – half sipping coffee and half day dreaming. Something was nagging at me – I felt called to be more involved in God’s work, but I didn’t know what or how – God had prepared my heart and left a hunger and an anticipation there. As this reverie played out in my head, a young woman named Lisa Rosenbauer, whom I hardly knew, came up and announced she had had a vision or dream. In that dream, my name was one of several on a list. In the dream, she was told to ask each person on the list to join her in starting a ministry to those diagnosed with a terminal illness. It would be a ministry like Isaiah House where a woman from our congregation, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Fairport, had died a few months earlier. Perhaps visions and dreams seem far-fetched in our postmodern world, but amazingly, even miraculously, each person on that list said yes to Lisa’s request.
We began following two paths at once. One to actually prepare for the ministry – find volunteers (we’d need 200 or so), develop training materials, find or rent a house to start, and many other details for actually doing this. At the same time, we also began the process of building a framework for supporting and running the ministry – you might say the management of the ministry. Doing these in parallel seemed natural, as we believed that God wanted this to happen. On the surface, many of us that had been asked to participate felt unprepared for what we were doing, but we never doubted we would succeed because we were convinced God would show us the way when we came to a roadblock – which happened quite often. We just saw this as a sign to look for another direction to follow.
Since Isaiah House, our model, was an outreach ministry of Corpus Christi Church, we naturally began with the idea that this new ministry would be an outreach ministry of our church, Bethlehem. So, we went to our Church Council who were very supportive and encouraged us to explore the details and keep them informed. We gathered information about cost, volunteers, and much more detail. We even rented a house to begin the ministry, and, in another amazing, miraculous story, arranged for the zoning variations needed to continue. We kept the Church Council aware of what we were doing, but, as the details came in, the Council saw this ministry as too large to be fully supported and run by our congregation. Although they fully encouraged and supported the ministry concept itself, they finally decided we needed to seek a corporate structure outside our single congregation.
We saw this as the hand of God leading us in another direction. So, we filed incorporation papers with the State of New York. Because of the nature of the ministry, these papers were naturally sent to the Department of Health (DOH) for review and comment. The initial response was quite negative, raised lots of questions and suggested we reapply as a home health care agency like Visiting Nurse Service or Genesee Region Home Care. The paperwork and requirements for the last suggestion were daunting and seemed completely out of character for the ministry we were called to develop. We prepared a careful response to their questions and concerns. Then, we asked the DOH to reconsider our request, which they did. But, the response was still negative, and our incorporation papers were denied. While this response was disappointing, we thanked God because we knew this roadblock was just one step in aiming us in the right directions. We just didn’t have any idea what that direction was. In the meantime, the process of finding volunteers organizing committees, and the like was well on target. We just had no way to connect them with the ministry they volunteered for and no idea which way to turn. Perhaps it’s when you run out of your own ideas that you are more open to really hearing what God is saying.
1989
In any event, the next idea came from a totally unexpected source. Lisa was a nurse at Visiting Nurse Service (VNS) and her boss knew of her effort to begin a ministry to the terminally ill and asked how it was coming. When Lisa related the response from DOH, her boss suggested we contact the VNS lawyer, Eric Stonehill of the Harris-Beach Law firm, for his suggestions. Eric made the novel, at least to us, suggestion of forming a religious services corporation. This corporation would be made up of the churches in the area, and, once formed, could engage in whatever ministries the member churches wanted to do.
Suddenly, God’s vision, for what we were about seemed much clearer, and bigger, than it had ever seemed before. Where we envisioned an outreach ministry from Bethlehem Lutheran Church, God wanted to involve all the churches. Where we saw a ministry to the terminally ill, God wanted to prepare us for much broader ministry. The possibility Eric showed us revitalized, even galvanized, us into excited, passionate action. We visited all the mission committees and church councils. We preached at most churches revealing to them the vision and the possibilities. And they responded. The new corporation, Perinton Ecumenical Ministries, came to life in 1990 with the churches of Perinton as its members. Its first ministry, Advent House, a home to serve those in the last weeks and months of life opened in 1991. Little by little, PEM included more ministries such as a community vacation Bible school and began to fulfill its larger calling.
In 1995, while volunteering at Advent House, I was talking to the volunteer I was working with. She was a young woman, full of ideas for ministry, but not sure how to make them become realities. The vision from 1987 was expanding again, and the seed for a ministry to victims of domestic violence was planted that night. That seed has grown into Safe Journey. As Safe Journey began operations in 1998, it was clear the needs and goals of growing new ministries differed from Advent House, a well established ministry.
Thus, a new corporation was spun off of PEM, and it was called Ecumenical Ministries of Perinton or EMP, short. PEM and EMP are sister corporations that share ideas and prayers and sometimes fundraisers. PEM continues to operate Advent House while EMP has continued to add new ministries. In addition to Safe Journey, that serves women and children seeking to become free from domestic violence and begin new lives of hope and promise, EMP also has other ministries under its umbrella: Community Vacation Bible School, the Fairport Good Neighbor Fund (meeting the emergency needs of the poor), Perinton Lay-Clergy Council (co-ordinates a variety of ecumenical and inter-faith programs), and the Perinton arm of Habitat for Humanity.
Dreams and visions may not be modern, but they can still inspire and enable God’s people even when those people don’t fully appreciate all the possibilities and can’t really see the end.