"The Church Must Help Lead the Health Crusade "
G. Lloyd Rediger
While organized religion obsesses over declining numbers, theological conflicts, and megachurch fads, a preeminent issue is failing to move us. The desperate health movement that is developing in our nation grows out of a realization that our indulgent lifestyles, addictions, and stresses are impairing or killing us. Tragically, our anguished floundering now seems normal, as we seek comfort rather than true health. But we can no longer afford the resultant costs and insidious diminishing of our lives and relationships. Further, a nation and church so impaired cannot fulfill the mandates of democracy, nor the mission of Jesus Christ. If we become fully healthy, however, we will thereby be open to the contemporary movements towards wholeness by God’s Holy Spirit.
Government and health agencies are recognizing the urgency of our accumulating sicknesses, even as opportunists are profiting from our confused stumbling. Medicine and therapists try to palliate and cure, but the prescription requires more than medicine, diet/exercise fads, and positive thinking. It needs ingredients that medicine, psychology, and government cannot provide, namely spiritual health and body-mind- spirit wholeness. Aren’t these the ingredients religion claims to offer?
A continuous flood of statistics and advertisements related to the poor health and lifestyles of Americans call for our concerned attention. This offers organized religion a grand opportunity that it has not had for centuries. The opportunity lies in the national crusade for health that is emerging in the United States. Presently it is led by medical professionals, government agencies, and diet-exercise gurus. But the new understandings of sickness, healing, and health require more than science and technology. Spirituality is the missing ingredient. And though spirituality has become a buzzword for all the helping professions, it is authentic religion that has the traditions, experience, and practitioners necessary to bring spiritual health and meaning to human illnesses and yearnings.
If organized religion handles this fresh opportunity well, we can help provide an awesome understanding of wholeness that heals and lifts us beyond the impairments that have become the normal way of life in America. Further, when we accept leadership in the health and healing movement, we add great impetus and meaning to our ministries of worship, evangelism, social justice, and healthy relationships. The theological import of this opportunity is our dawning awareness that healing and health are not just add-ons to our traditional ministries, they a primary part of our salvation. For wholeness, in its spiritual meanings, is well-being for body-mind-spirit, indeed, for all of creation. If we ignore this opportunity, then personal, relational, and environmental healings will be incomplete. And if we abuse this opportunity by only offering antiquated versions of spirituality, then God’s universal movement towards healing and health will pass us by.
This exciting healing and health crusade is a wake-up call, reminding us how much time and energy we waste trying to sustain business-as-usual in the church. Isn’t this why Jesus wept over Jerusalem ... when religious leaders chose to ignore his teachings and model, as he devoted most of his attention to healing and caring ministries.
Shakespeare, one of the profound “theologians” of all time, stated the dynamics of our opportunity well when in his classic drama, Julius Caesar, he wrote, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries” (IV, iii, 217).
This national crusade does not yet include spiritual health, though many leaders use the term. In its present form the crusade focuses on physical healing and health, with only vague references to mental and spiritual wellness. It is being influenced by the new understandings of universal energy from the quantum sciences, and intuitive therapies by alternative healers. With so many people sick, and escalating sickness-care costs, the crusade will continue to grow, whether religion participates or not. Though religion is a late entry into the leadership mix, it can yet have a decisive and prophetic role in this nation’s desperate quest for health and peace.
To clarify religion’s involvement in healing and health ministries, let us ask ourselves some simple yet profound questions.
Why should the church become involved in health ministries? The overly simple, yet convincing answer is that Jesus made such ministries a priority, as did the church until recent times. Further, it is painfully apparent that medicine and psychology, though valuable, are unable to provide the spiritual dimension needed for total health and body-mind-spirit. Religion needs to be involved in the health crusade for its own health, as well as the health of the nation and our planet. When clergy and parishioners are truly fit in body-mind-spirit, a caring openness to human maladies draws us beyond parochial limitations and into the new/old spirituality of wholeness and love. Many congregations, and clergy, have never had this experience of shared wholeness-love, though we have talked about it often. Today we have a fresh opportunity.
What are health ministries? This logical question is similar to asking what is the Gospel. Health ministries are whatever ministries are needed for wholeness. And wholeness is the fulfillment of God’s purposes, in us and through us.
In everyday meanings, the health ministries of wholeness include worship, preaching and teaching that raise our awareness of the Imago Dei and what God requires of us. Such ministries consist of healing services, care for the sick, and impaired, celebrations of health and fitness (Health Fairs, recreation that emphasizes healthful interaction rather than victory, etc.), preventative treatments and therapies, nurturing of health habits, social justice projects, artistic expressions, and ecological sensitivities.
Where should health ministries be located? The answer is: where the needs are. Congregations of any size can become healthier and do healing and health ministries. Larger congregations often have resources but need a healing-health vision. Smaller congregations can develop health ministries by clustering, teaming with health agencies and by focusing on local, unmet needs and opportunities. Presently we tend to locate our newest “church-plantings” in areas where there are space, resources, and attractive people. Since we can easily see that such congregations “thrive,” we tend to continue this pragmatic policy. Clearly human needs are met in and through such thriving congregations. Yet, the prophetic calls of the Older Testament, and the teachings of Jesus require a dedication to the needs of the impoverished, oppressed, abused, and impaired, as well as the privileged. There is no quick thrill in locating our ministries in the dark corners of our neighborhoods and nation. Yet fulfilling our biblical mandates is deeply satisfying, and an appropriate response to the siren call of “location ... location ... location.”
Who should do health ministries? The answer is deceptively simple, and yet complicated: all of us should be involved in health ministries. For healing and health are part of personal salvation, as well as that of the geofamily. Further, all of us need healing sometimes ... from something and for something.
Healing and health require realistic information, specialized training, and health-producing lifestyles. When we presume to say that religion should do healing and health ministries, we must recognize that while we are often competent in facilitating healing and health of the spirit, we are less competent in facilitating healing of the body and mind. Pastors, for example, seldom have training in ministrations to bodily sickness or mental disorders. Few have learned how to do a healing service appropriately. Those who practice health ministries have typically learned what they practice by experience. And many avoid such practices due to fear. Medical and psychological professionals are similarly limited. Religion can do better than this, not by supplanting medical or psychological professionals, but by collaborating with them, and providing appropriate spiritual prescriptions. Without such collaboration and shared leadership, medicine, psychology, and religion are like the fabled three blind men trying to describe a mighty elephant. Presently, the Parish Nurse organization offers one of the best models for the church. But these dedicated practitioners cannot fulfill our mission alone.
How should body-mind-spirit ministries be provided? The simple answer is, in the most effective ways possible. The complex answer is, through the good models already available, and through prayer and study of needs in our local and national settings. Most denominations offer some helpful resources, but printed materials and videotapes are only a beginning. A few congregations and seminaries offer a limited variety of healing and health programs, but these fall woefully short of the concerted efforts needed. We need policy and programmatic changes at denominational, ecumenical and seminary levels that do healing and health, beyond lip-service.
If the Bible and ministry of Jesus are our guides, and human needs (including our own) are our calling, we may expect that God will empower our prayerful efforts to meet this awesome challenge.
Here are is a brief, selective list of resources for information and study:
Internet:
PCUSA: www.pcusa.org
Parish Nurses: www.ipnrc.parishnurses.org
Books:
The Healing Church, Practical Programs for Health Ministries, Abigail Rian Evans. Cleveland: United Church Press, 1999.
Healing & Christianity, Morton Kelsey. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1995.
Fit To Be A Pastor: A Call To Physical, Mental & Spiritual Fitness, G. Lloyd Rediger. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
Printed in THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK
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