LOUISVILLE — At First
Presbyterian Church in Billings, MT, two parish nurses show
up twice a week to conduct blood-pressure screenings and offer
health counseling and friendship.
Meanwhile, deacons make hospital visits and serve communion to
the homebound, and the church’s “care board”
delivers flowers and audiotapes of worship services to members
too ill to attend.
It’s all part of the congregation’s expanding health-ministry
program.
“All of these are healing ministries,” said the Rev.
Jay Wallace, associate pastor. “Jesus’s ministry was
a healing ministry, and that’s what we’re really about
— bringing healing into people’s lives.”
The Montana pastor and about 35 other clergy, parish nurses and
church health program leaders from around the nation gathered
here for the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s “2004 Encircling
Care Conference: Nurturing Congregations Through Health Ministry.”
The purpose of the five-day meeting, which ended on March 18,
was to provide guidance to Presbyterians interested in starting
or expanding congregational health ministry programs.
These ministries promote the health, healing and wholeness of
individuals, families, congregations and communities, through
a wide variety of programs.
“Much of the effort of health ministers and parish nurses
is directed toward one-to-one intervention,” said keynote
speaker Mary Chase-Ziolek, director of the Center for Faith and
Health and associate professor of Health Ministries at North Park
Theological Seminary in Chicago. “This is certainly a logical
place for many churches to begin. I would suggest that a mature
health ministry needs to also look outward towards the community.
We need to look beyond our doors to get outside into our neighborhoods
and adopt the public-health model in which, rather than the individual
client, the community is the client.”
Health ministries can be started by formal committees or by a
few interested people. They can emphasize health education or
promote spiritual centeredness. They can be found in large and
small churches in rural and urban areas all across the country.
Some include parish nursing, in which a registered nurse works
with congregations and faith-based organizations to provide health
education and counseling, advocacy, referrals and community support.
One approach mentioned often during the conference is the creation
of congregation-based care teams or groups of volunteers working
together to offer practical, emotional and spiritual support to
people who need it.
“Health ministry involves collaboration between congregations
and health-care organizations,” said Chase-Ziolek, whose
background is in community health nursing. “It involves
collaboration between health professionals and clergy. It requires
a wide variety of health professionals, clergy and lay people
to be involved in dialogue.”
During the recent conference, small groups explored such topics
as thinking “spiritually and strategically” in planning
health ministries, and issues that congregational health ministries
can address.
There also was an intensive two-day program designed to equip
registered nurses for the parish nurse ministry, and to help congregations
decide whether parish nursing is part of what they are called
to do. Participants also learned how to set up congregational
care teams.
The event — sponsored by the denomination’s
Office of Health Ministries
USA, part of the PC(USA)’s National Ministries Division
— also featured networking opportunities and workshops.
Mary Tucker, an elder and parish nurse at 300-member First Presbyterian
Church in Somerset, KY, said she found the conference enlightening.
“The networking has been wonderful,” she said. “It
will help bolster what I do, and also give me some more resources
and people to talk to who are going through similar concerns and
similar successes.”
Tucker and others agreed that churches should be involved in
health ministries in light of the importance of healing in the
early church and numerous gospel accounts of Jesus healing the
sick.
“This conference has highlighted several reasons why spirituality
and health are an integral part of what a congregation should
be about,” she said. “Jesus’s role as a minister
and a healer is our prime example.”
With the median age of congregants in mainline churches at 67,
health ministries for older adults is essential in church-based
health ministry, said Henry C. Simmons, a professor of religion
and aging who also directs the Center on Aging at Union Theological
Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond,
VA.
“All of life is holy is that which is modeled in reaching
out for those who are urgently in need of care,” said Simmons,
who has written books on ministries to the aging. “We model
in our care those staples of faith that God is not finished with
us yet, that God will not abandon us ever, as the Almighty is
holy.”
Jan McGilliard of Blacksburg, VA, who has worked in older-adult
ministries for about 20 years, said her work is strongly related
to health ministries.
“I believe that we should be offering programs for the
whole of the church,” said McGilliard, an elder at Blacksburg
Presbyterian Church who works as the Synod of the Mid-Atlantic’s
associate for older-adult ministries. “I don’t think
that anyone wants to be singled out in a particular age group,
but … we know that a high percentage of the people who will
benefit from a health ministry are in those (older) age categories.”
For additional information about the Office of Health Ministries
USA or to learn more about starting or expanding a health ministry
in your church, log on to
www.pcusa.org/health/usa.
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