Reaching Out: A Health Ministry at Our Church?
By Paul Citerony
An obvious reason why adopting a health ministry by a local church makes sense is because a local church is or should be, the community’s main evangelizing entity. The local congregation preaches, teaches and witnesses about the compassion of God, - a merciful God that esteems mercy shown by all. It’s the local congregation in conjunction with a health ministry which can better receive converts into its fellowship and is best equipped to support new believers.
It’s not about supplanting a local free clinic or existing major medical facility. It’s about providing a quick, drop-in “pit stop” for area residents, - checking blood pressure, diabetes symptoms and seemingly minor but nagging health discomfort episodes that people hesitate to make clinic appointments for. This is stuff that people might also wonder about and are hesitant in seeing medical pros in a traditional setting because they might lack insurance. Initially, this can be tried experimentally as a one time single two hour AM session, - say for one Saturday in a month, - perhaps even call it a health fair and staffed by a Community Health Registered Nurse, - any Registered Nurse Volunteer from the local hospital or clinic. This can be expanded to include brief free dental consultations also donated by an area dentist!
Lois Peacock, RN is executive director of California Bay Area Health Ministries and trains nurses and public health educators to launch health ministry programs within their congregations. Peacock said, “ Healthcare facilities and public health agencies often rely on congregational partnerships for outreach”. She also adds, “People don’t show up at county clinics anymore, and health departments and hospitals need another way to reach people,”
In experimenting with this expanded vision of a church-based health ministry, the main intent is to establish the church as a healing center as much as possible. The degree to which a church can become more focused on healing will depend on the facilities and personnel available to the congregation’s general area.
Prominent features of this concept are:
§ The establishment of an identifiable, permanent health ministry by our church that will become well known in the community.
§ The operation of a facility (however modest) for health-related services that is connected to our local church or easily identified with it.
§ The offering of both preventive care and restored health through immune-system-enhancing lifestyle education and support. Clients and patients may come to understand that the effective therapy is biblically associative.
§ The availability of a pastor or other qualified church members, if requested with the clients/patients in lifestyle instruction and the possible holistic connection with spiritual/emotional factors.
§ The gentle but systematic invitation to health clients to acquaint themselves with additional life-giving or nurturing Bible teachings.
According to this model, a local church’s objective is to go as far toward establishing and maintaining its health ministry as it can with the resources and personnel it has. In ministering to such genuine human needs, the church’s goal for health outreach should be to become well known in the community both as a center of good health and overall well-being. Then it would be helpful also to achieve the highest profile possible for its other ministries.
Any church can be motivated to invest in a health ministry for the following reasons:
1. Giving new or better life to the sick complements the gospel presentation theologically and practically.
2. Churches which offer need-based health ministries as part of a well-rounded church growth program do grow (see Christian Schwarz, Natural Church Development).
3. Generally, churches which offer health ministries are themselves healthier physically and spiritually.
4. There is no better way to overcome the possible view of any congregation as self centered than to draw near to sick people in Christ-like concern for their health by exemplifying scripture teaching.
The Vision of a Church’s Health Ministry including Pastoral Care can bring individuals, families and the larger Parish community to health and spiritual wholeness. A more complete Health Ministry program then is an investment with a huge payoff! Consider: The Church is one of the few institutions in society that can and does advocate for the marginalized, those who need care and for various reasons may be unable to access that care.
Starting a viable Church Health Ministry as an intrepid outreach initiative could later include providing other faith –based outreach assistance and possible collaboration in other important health services. A modest example could be the Ministry’s “Health Stuffs Closet” providing free (gently used) walkers, wheelchairs, hospital beds, or other special bedside equipment.
The Church Health Ministry – The Vision and What's In It for the General Community
ü Creates larger community awareness of needs.
ü Improves relationships of the community and congregations.
ü Improves quality of life for recipients and givers.
ü Involves ordinary people making an extraordinary difference when it really counts.
The outreach motivation of a health ministry initiative coincides with an increasingly guiding current focus of many churches, - according to this on-line clearinghouse for community faith practice strategies: From the web based faith-based Leadership Network, -http://www.leadnet.org/LC_ExternallyFocusedChurches.asp
“Churches have begun in recent years to redefine their success factors from exclusively measuring their internal success in terms of people in worship to measuring external success in terms of people served in the community.”
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