Finding a Way

Over the past several months, I\’ve been assessing, reassessing, brainstorming, and struggling with next steps. I feel as though there is an unfinished and unpaved path set before me that I can only see by way of flashlight, a few steps at a time. And there have been several potholes and pitfalls along the way. However, as these months have progressed, and my own progress has slowly grown, I feel as though I have a clearer picture of what I want to do next.

There are a few purposes behind this blog.

1. Personally, it is a place for me to process my thoughts and feelings as I try to grow in my capacity to do health ministry.
2. It is a place for anyone trying to marry their faith and health to gain insight and understanding on how to do so.
3. Eventually, I want to help anyone who wants to explore health ministry to see how I did it.

That last point, on what it looks like to build a health ministry, is the one I want to touch on in this post, because it\’s been such a struggle. The main model of health ministry I have looked into as a nurse has been through the Faith Community Nursing (FCN) model, which has been a really wonderful resource. But here are a few of the challenges that face me when it comes to this model of ministry:

1. I just moved churches. And my church is HUGE.
   
   If I were attending a relatively small church, starting a health ministry program might be as easy as asking my pastor if I could just do a blood pressure screening for the congregants every few Sundays (a very standard way of starting an FCN ministry in a church, as I\’ve found). But in lieu of the pandemic, which makes face-to-face interactions a bit fraught at times, and the shift to a new church, I have few contacts or ways to start something that\’s even this small. And personally, I\’m hesitant to take our family to church since our youngest is not old enough to wear a mask. I\’ve tried to keep my social circle small, since I work full time with oncology patients and they are generally (sometimes severely) immunocompromised. So we\’ve mostly been attending virtual church.
   
   Also, we have several thousand people who attend on Sundays, with a relatively older demographic. If little-old-me tried to do a simple blood pressure screening on Sunday mornings, I\’d probably never be able to leave, and I don\’t know if I could commit the amount of time I\’d need to find other people and organize screenings. Who do I even ask to do something like this? I\’m still exploring this avenue, and it\’s probably not as hard as I think it is, but I gotta admit, it\’s a little intimidating.
   
   
2. I want this to be a financially viable way for me to support myself and my family.
   
   Based on what I\’ve found so far, most faith community nurses work very, very part time or are volunteers in the congregations they serve. This is not my vision for myself or the church I serve. My goal is to make health ministry a financially stable form of work that would support me and my family. (OK… yeah I know, this probably sounds like a pipe dream for those of you who are in ministry, because honestly, most pastors aren\’t paid all that well if you\’re not at a megachurch. And I\’d be a peripheral member of the ministry team, which makes this sound more impossible. But … let\’s see what we can do about that)
   
   It\’s also really expensive to take all the classes, get the certificates, and read all the books that I want to read to get down some of the basics. My husband and I have financial goals. We value frugality and living within our means, and some of these classes are not only not within our means, I have absolutely no time to take them.
   
   
3. It\’s just hard to find other faith community nurses.
   
   I\’ve joined a few groups and reached out to a few people, tried to make contacts and form relationships with churches. There just aren\’t a big group of FCNs out there. It\’s a relatively rare group, and although they\’ve been picking up steam in the last 40-50 years, it\’s still a pretty small club.
   
   The other challenge with finding other FCNs is that I have not yet found anyone who works in the Korean-American setting. Granted, my current church is NOT Korean American, although they do have a small population of them. And my goal isn\’t necessarily to work in the Korean-American church scene. However, this is the context in which I grew up, and where I\’m generally the most comfortable in terms of knowing most of the basic cultural contexts and social norms. I still have quite a few friends and contacts in this demographic, and most of these churches have smaller congregations, which makes doing small health ministry related event less administratively harrowing.

So… what do I do next?

I\’ve been on the lookout for volunteer and networking opportunities in the time I do have, and there are a few things I\’ve been able to get connected with in order to expand my understanding of how health ministry works, what community health looks like, and how I want to continue to grow this idea in future.

1. (I know this is the third list in this series of lists, but it helps me think!)
   Bolingbrook Christian Health Center
   
   There\’s a community based health center having an event in the middle of this month that I\’ve volunteered for. I\’m super excited about it! This center was started by Sue Davis, an advanced practice nurse. They are running an event where they\’ll be doing appointments and labs for patients at the clinic, and I\’ll probably just be involved doing nursey-related things or phlebotomy. I\’m hoping this event will expand my understanding of what it looks like to serve an underserved population and get me connected to people who are already doing health ministry so that I can grow in my understanding of how to grow in this area.
   (If you\’re interested in serving, their revamped website is:
   https://www.bolingbrookhealth.org/)
   
   
2. Grief
   
   This one is a little bit more relevant to my current position as a nurse in oncology, but I was recently asked if I could teach one of the 10 week sessions on grief and loss at our church. Thankfully, the curriculum is already made, I would just need to incorporate some of my own stories of experiencing loss into some of the teaching time. So far, I\’ve attended a few of the sessions, and mine won\’t be coming up until the end of the month. It\’s been incredibly humbling, and to be honest, I don\’t feel qualified to be teaching on this topic. But grief is so much a part of life, and learning to be present with others during times of loss is something I want to be better at.

I will hopefully be writing about my experiences with both of these events through the month of October. I\’m also doing a lot of goal-setting and researching, and in doing so, I find myself feeling as though I can see a little further on this path that I\’m travelling.

A few blog entries ago, I shared that I felt that God was telling me not to waste the time I had, even as I struggled to understand where he wanted me to go. I still don\’t feel like I can hear him all that clearly. I don\’t have a clear understanding of where I\’m supposed to go. But I continue to hope that he\’ll keep giving me nudges in the right direction, and that I\’ll have the ears to hear, even if I can\’t quite see it all that well. In the meantime, I\’ll keep pushing forward and hope I catch glimpses along the way.