‘Parish Nursing has been the most significant ministry in mission that I have encountered in 25 years of leadership’ (experienced minister, leading a church in the UK).1
If your church could employ or appoint someone to serve alongside you, someone whose work enables contact with one third more people than those who come to church, would you want to read on? And if that person regularly had the opportunity to pray with people who had no other link with the church, would you be even more interested?
The Gospel and Health
Health is of interest to everyone, whether or not they go to church. It can also be a bridge by which we can reach out to people in need, just as Jesus did. Mission hospitals and clinics have existed for many years in different parts of the world, providing whole-person health programmes that address spiritual care as well as physical and mental health needs. Yet in recent times, they have often been replaced by state-funded or private health facilities that are run with a secular approach. In Luke 10, Jesus sent his disciples out to ‘heal the sick . . . and tell them that the kingdom of God is near them.’2 So, in our present-day context, when some health-providers are resistant to the inclusion of prayer and spiritual care as integral to their offering, how can the church rediscover its gospel calling to include health and healing as part of its outreach?
how can the church rediscover its gospel calling to include health and healing as part of its outreach?
As a nurse and a Baptist minister, I have often been challenged by this question. Hospitals have chaplains to whom someone can be referred, and they must continue to have our support and prayers. But in the Community Health sector, the way in which care is structured and regulated may prevent practitioners from being able to offer spiritual care interventions such as prayer, discussion about faith, forgiveness, or purpose and meaning in life, or linking people to a church where they may explore faith for themselves.
Against that background, in 2001, I first discovered the work of the International Parish Nursing Resource Centre, now the Westberg Institute. Globally, over the last thirty years, around 20 countries have been developing the ministry of nurses as part of their church’s outreach teams. It’s called Faith Community Nursing, or Parish Nursing, and it’s a way of promoting kingdom impact in every sphere of society.
Community health care through the church?
The Westberg Institute offers nurse teachers a one-week, professionally updated training course that equips registered nurses to deliver whole-person health care from their local church. It covers professional health issues, health education, and patient advocacy, but also spiritual care and the offer of prayer where appropriate, along with teaching about how to train and manage volunteers to support families with health crises or long-term conditions.
Meeting with some of these nurses in conference, I found myself being given a vision for establishing it in my own country, with a clear call from God to do that. It felt scary. . . a bit like Moses must have felt when being called to lead the people out from Egypt: ‘Who am I, Lord, that I should go?’3 Yet looking back, God had prepared me for this moment, with a somewhat unique mix of health care, teaching, ministry and regional mission enabling. And an extremely supportive husband for the journey!
It’s been a long pioneering story involving many challenges; the concept of sacred/secular divide across many of our educational, voluntary and state organisations; the reluctance of some health care managers to acknowledge the role of the church and voluntary work; the need for churches to see the potential and understand how to set up a nursing service; the seeking of financial resources to provide the professional support needed; the communicating of the vision when there are so many other things on a church’s or Bible college’s agenda; the recruiting and training of nurses; the management of the growth of a charity and the care of its staff. But along the way, God has brought me into contact with some wonderful nurses who have combined their nursing experience and faith to exercise an amazing ministry through their churches. He has enabled me to begin the establishment of the national resource to support these nurses (Parish Nursing Ministries UK); work with the World Forum for Faith Community Nursing; write and research a robust theological foundation for the ministry;4 and just recently, join the Lausanne Movement as Issue Network co-catalyst for Health for all Nations, to share how this and other health initiatives can be more widely taken up as a mission initiative by churches across the world.
Could your church reach out with this kind of programme?
Nurses don’t just work in hospitals tending the sick. They are often found out in the community, promoting wellness and support for people with long-term conditions, leading health initiatives. They also exist in our congregations, sometimes unrecognised, but hold huge potential for the church’s ministry of health and healing.
‘Nurses in our congregations hold huge potential for the church’s ministry of health and healing.’
How about where you worship? Is there a registered nurse in your congregation who has the experience and gifts to lead that kind of work? Working with volunteers and pastoral care teams, could they provide the up-to-date professional support that people with long-term conditions need? Could they identify and address local health needs, develop the church’s relationships with other health care providers, pray with people who ask for that, and increase the profile of the church in the community? If so, why not point them to this possibility and find out where they can access the training and professional support that will equip them for this leadership role?
Please feel free to email me, giving your name, church and country of practice, and I will try to connect you with the right organisation or person to help you find out more.
Endnotes
- In Solari-Twadell, P.A. and Ziebarth, D.J., (eds) Faith Community Nursing. (Berlin:Springer Nature, 2020). p 140.
- Luke 10:9. NIV
- Exodus 3:11. NIV
- Wordsworth, H.A. Rediscovering a ministry of health; Parish nursing as a mission of the local church. (Eugene, OR:Wipf and Stock,2015).