35: Get To Know HOPE! Kasey Cornforth on A Life Filled with Children, Coffee, and Compassion

Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope.

Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online.

We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others.

Welcome to Hope.

Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of the Meet Hope podcast.

We're excited to be here today for another in our staff interview series.

My name is Rick and I'm happy to be here with Kasey Cornforth.

Yes hi, rick, good morning, good morning.

Stop, I'm warning you.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No, it's okay, we should have warned you oh sorry.

I'm sorry, that's okay.

I thought it was super little things.

Yeah, we could have gone.

I just laughed because we just did it with Kristy you did.

That's why I laughed a little bit.

I'm sorry.

We do it when we do other recorded type stuff.

Yeah, remember like we tried it.

Yes, no, that makes sense.

I should have known that.

Yeah, it was all right.

I'm sorry, hi, rick, just gonna say hi Rick.

Should I say pass, oh Rick.

No, okay, I'm like wait.

Pass.

Yeah, I would like the Reverend Court.

Oh, I like that.

Fred Gimathrone's.

That's funny, I'm sorry.

All right, here we go again.

All right, so hello everyone.

Welcome to another episode of the Meet Hope podcast.

My name is Rick and I'm glad that you could be with us, and today we're going to continue our staff interview series, and we have Casey Cornforth with us.

Hi, rick, hey, how are you?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm good, I'm good.

So, as you know, we're going to talk a little bit about yourself and then about your role here and some other fun questions, just so people get a chance to get to know you a little bit better.

So why don't you give us, like some like a life summary, tell us about your family, your spouse, your kids, stuff like that.

Okay, so I was born and raised in South Jersey.

I grew up in West Berlin with my parents, betty and Joe, and my two younger brothers, kyle and Dominic, and I met my husband, joe, in West Berlin and that's where we lived, you know, for the the early part of our relationship.

And then we met at the fire hall.

So at the West Berlin fire department my dad was the chief and he was the new guy.

He had just moved to town, just joined.

He had a cute little bulldog and I was just hooked from the beginning.

And that's quite daring that he would choose to date the chief's daughter.

He got quite a reputation from that yeah.

But he's a good guy so my dad was was very happy to approve that one.

We'll have to interview Joe on another episode.

Here's the story.

All right, and so you guys have been married for For 12 years.

Yeah.

And we have three kids three beautiful corns William, who is nine, Mary, who is seven and Lucas, who's five.

All right, and is it Mary or Meredith?

Well, her name's Meredith, but we call her Mary.

All right, and Mary is here right now.

She is Hi, mary, so you're going to be part of a future episode, okay.

We'll do a Kids of Hope episode maybe.

Yeah, she would love to be on that All right, so you also have two dogs.

We do, we do.

We have Bella, who is our 11-year-old English Bulldog.

She is a grumpy granny dog.

And we have Buddy, who is our new nine-month-old red lab puppy.

That's great.

And how does Bella get along with Buddy?

She does not.

She actually had a seizure when we brought him home.

Oh no, she was so upset.

Oh my goodness, I'm so glad he was joining the family.

She just fell right over and, yes, she has not liked him since.

That's good?

No, well, not really.

But that's kind of funny.

No, but yes, she's good All right.

So you went to Stockton, Stockton College yes, I did, and you got a degree in criminal justice.

Yes.

That's so interesting.

So you're working in children's ministry with a degree in criminal justice.

What's that say about our kids?

It says that they're very safe.

I can call myself the Olivia Benson of Hope.

It's one of my favorite shows, but no, it's interesting.

I learned a lot and I loved it.

My goal was to be a prosecutor and then I just decided to marry Joe.

He hooked me with that bulldog and we had kids.

All right.

Another interesting job you had is when you were a teenager.

You worked for Ulta.

Yes.

And what is Ulta?

Ulta is a very, very cool makeup store and they also have a salon and I worked in both.

But I started there when I was 16.

And I just I loved it.

It was the people and the things that I learned and the discount, obviously, that I got on all the makeup.

It was just.

It was a dream job for a very girlie, 16-year-old.

That's great, it's really good.

All right, so yes, you have.

So we got your Ulta experience, and criminal justice led you to children's ministry.

Yes, it led me to Hope, so how'd you come to Hope?

I actually came through MOPs, the MOPs program.

At the time I was attending MOPs at St Andrews and I got a call from Hope member Jen Parks she was like the MOPs liaison at the time and she invited me here.

She invited me to the MOPs group and it was a very it was.

The MOPs group I was in was very small compared to Hope's and when I came here it was a little overwhelming but it very quickly felt at home, made a ton of new friends and just kind of have been here ever since.

All right, and how long have you been attending?

About eight years About eight years, ok, and you and your family have been coming to worship about that long or that.

You started in MOPs, but then you started attending later right.

Yes, we started attending church a few years later, I would have to say, probably full time over the pandemic, actually when it was online, oh, ok.

Yeah, all right, that's neat.

All right.

So before we get into your ministry role, I want to ask you you have a funny life moment which I think it's kind of an interesting story.

So, and you call it a Casey-ism yes, because your first name is Casey.

Yes, the Casey-ism.

Yeah, my family came up with that.

Oh OK, it's family, you know like my parents, my aunts and uncles, they, my grandparents, they all.

When I was younger, I had a lot of Casey-isms, and I still do at 36.

And it's good that we can laugh at ourselves.

So why don't you tell that little story?

So I was sent to shop right by my mom with a list and she needed evaporated milk, and I had no idea what that was and didn't cook or bake much then and still don't, and went to the milk aisle, because when you see milk, that's where you go, and I assumed it was cold in a carton or a plastic jug and could not find it and was very frustrated and very impatient.

called my mom at work and she was also busy, and she's like you know what do you mean?

It's in the baking aisle.

You know, go find it in the baking aisle.

I'm like why would it be there?

And she's like case it's in a can.

I'm like it is Like I had no clue.

And she's like yes, it's in a can.

Like I'm like well, this doesn't make sense.

Like what cow does this come from?

And, as you could tell, you know I have not lived that down.

Yeah, so that's still so.

I'm sure anytime the evaporated milk comes up, they tell that story.

Yes, always my mom loves to share that story.

So and listeners, just so you know, dorm rehearsal we looked up to find out the difference between evaporated milk and it is Just that it's evaporated.

So, they take out some of the water.

Yeah, right, yeah, boil it down and then condensed milk we found is even Thicker, I guess less.

Yeah someone's gonna correct that.

I'm sure since, but that's, that's what we learned about evaporator milk.

Yeah, today.

Yeah, I was too overwhelmed back then.

I needed to just process the fact that it was not cold, you know yeah, and we're gonna.

We, we can thank Ashley, the producer, because she googled while we were rehearsing to do all the research.

Yeah, so alright.

So back to your role here at.

So what is your role, what's your title and what are your primary Responsibility?

yes, so I am the Hope Kids Director and I'm also the events coordinator, so I work primarily in the kids wing.

On Sundays I run the kids program we offer, you know, at both services we offer kids program and we need lots of volunteers.

We have a wonderful team already of volunteers who come in and they work with the kids.

They do activities and games and lessons and we have curriculum that we get through orange, which is a really great curriculum, and we also I also get to plan really fun events throughout the year.

We do egg hunts, we do a good Friday experience for kids, service projects and my personal favorite, the gingerbread event every November yeah and so.

So there's a kids program at both the nine and ten thirty services, right, and then all those other events as well.

Yes so lots of volunteers lots of volunteers always looking for more volunteers.

Yeah okay, so what do you love most about it?

I really love the people that I get to work with and serve alongside of.

We have, you know, adults of all ages.

We have some older teens that come and help, we have people who are retired people with kids.

You know, I would say primarily they all have, you know, younger children, but I've learned so much from all of them and a lot of them are teachers or have different career backgrounds, and I'm always able to see the way that they speak to the kids, the way they get down on their level and Just like the things that they plan, and not only just the teaching part, but how they bring faith into that, which for me, wanting to grow my own faith through this experience, it's really, really magical to witness.

That's great, that's really good.

So what about, just so ministry?

You know there's things we love.

There's also things that can be challenging.

What do you find is most challenging in this role?

Yeah, so for me it was like a personal challenge.

It was Just not feeling confident in knowing the Bible enough and even though I went to Catholic school my whole life, I felt like I just didn't know.

I knew some stories but I didn't know enough and I don't know them.

Where I can pull them, you know, in a lesson and more organically.

So I want to challenge myself to dive into that and be more comfortable with that and also just finding the right Vocabulary to use with the kids and and kind of grow my teaching skills so that I can feel more confident to teach them myself, you know, and not just kind of organize it but also be like one of the volunteers and how they are.

Yeah, and most recently you led your own small group.

I did.

That was one of the scariest experiences of my life being alone with children and having to be the one in charge but it went really, really well.

I picked a really great book called circles and I was able, you know, to plan it all out and the kids None of them ran away screaming.

They all seem to have a great time.

That's.

That's a Good low bar.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, so let's get back to some things that so people get to know you Better, as well as what you do.

But so I'm gonna give you some rapid-fire questions and they're never as rapid-fire as I think they're gonna be, because I, like, I'm talking about these things but so your favorite pizza topping.

Yes, so topping would be pepperoni, but I like a dip, like a pizza dip.

Okay.

So I like to dip any type of pizza, the full pizza into blue cheese dressing.

All right, that's that's interesting.

I I also like blue cheese, but I don't know you mean you dip the whole.

Pizza thing yeah.

I eat the pizza till you get to the, just the crust.

Okay and then if there's no sauce left on the crust, then I dip it in blue cheese.

Yeah, that is like a red stick.

It is, yeah, very good but I'm gonna.

I'm not sure I can go with the sauce as well.

I'll put yeah, yeah, it's really good when you have jalapenos on it really okay cheese.

It's just a weird mixture, but it's so good, All right.

And now are you a morning person or an evening person?

I'm an evening person.

My body is taking over and I'm slowly getting into being more of a morning person, just because I'm naturally waking up earlier, I'm tired earlier, but I really want to fight hard to stay an evening person, yeah, so it's hard, it's hard.

the older you have, the harder it is yeah an evening person.

I stayed up the other night till 10, 30 and I was pretty happy about that.

Yeah, were you watching a show, or yeah, yeah, and I really.

It's usually the shows that keep us up and it's the worst is I was so tired and I thought, oh man, I'm really up late.

And then it was the clock.

I'm like it's only 10, 30.

That's not that late.

I have a coffee order.

Yes, so I am a Starbucks girl and I love their venti iced brown sugar, oat milk, shaken espresso.

That is very specific.

Yes, it's a menu item.

I didn't create it, but it's really good.

And the shaken part means they actually shake it.

Yes, all right, so that's what I was told it's like the James Bond of coffee.

Yes, shaken, but not stirred.

Shaken, not stirred.

Ok, and how about your favorite show or movie that you watched recently?

Yeah.

So our new favorite family show is Abbott Elementary.

It's so good, it is good, the kids love it, it's pretty safe for the kids, it's family friendly and it's just so funny.

Yeah, it's a very good show and it's based in Philadelphia right, yes, or it's about Philadelphia, yeah.

And how about a book you read recently?

Yeah, so this was called these Silent Woods.

It's such a fascinating book.

It's about a father who's an army vet and he has to take his daughter into the woods and raise her there because there's some secrets that he's hiding and he realizes his time is cut short and he has to figure out what he's going to do to survive and how he's going to integrate back into the real world, or if he can.

It's really, really interesting.

I'm going to look for.

That Sounds interesting.

A good summer read for me, maybe.

Yeah.

And how about a local place to eat?

Yes, so we love.

There's two places we really love and we go to a lot.

So if we're going out to eat, it's always victory lane, and then if we're ordering in, which is very often, we order in from Angelos Pizza.

Angelos Pizza.

I haven't been to Angelos.

I've been to Victory a lot.

I was at Victory last night.

Oh, I'm jealous, I'm jealous.

So it was a good night to be out.

Well, I'll look for you guys there.

Yeah, absolutely Sounds good.

All right, so you've got.

I want to do an elevator pitch right?

You have 30 seconds, yes, and you can describe yourself, your life and what you do, so ready go.

OK, I am a talkative, stress-yelling mama who hates to cook, but I love to go to the movies alone.

I am always on the go, probably running late.

I love being around my family and my friends and I really feel the best part of what I get to do is to helping others and finding new ways to make an impact, and my life is pretty much chaos and that is why we have all earned you know the kids and I have earned the nickname Crazy Corns.

All right, Crazy Corns, because your last name is Corn Forest.

Corn Forest, the Crazy Corns.

Or the Crazy Corns All right, and you know what.

We ask everyone this question.

At the end, Casey tells what is bringing you hope today.

Yeah, so what brings me hope really are my own children and also the kids here at Hope.

I get to see how they take faith and what we teach them in the kids' wing and integrate it in their playing and interacting with each other.

Just last week, my five-year-old made this really profound statement, talking about, you know, treating others with kindness, no matter who they are, what they are, where, why, and the way he said it was just so fascinating and so powerful you know, coming from this little guy and it made me realize that what we do on Sundays and the things that we say to them and show them and how we lead these kids, it really will make an impact in the long term.

Yeah, it really matters.

You know, lead with kindness.

Yeah, it matters.

Yeah, good, good for you.

Hey, Casey, thanks.

Thank you, this was so much fun.

And Meredith, thank you too.

Yeah, you were a good girl, mary.

Good job, good job and thank you everyone for listening.

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Thanks for being a part of the Hope community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope.

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