As I continue to explore doing health ministry, and even doing it online, it’s been hard not to be stymied by the slowness of it all. Although I am working toward the creation of a health ministry program/faith community nursing program in our congregation, part of what makes it difficult is the amount of time and effort it takes. There’s also a lot of waiting going on. I’m just… waiting. But until I can get my feet wet and on the ground, spending time meditating on, teaching, and finding creative ways to minister to other people in ways that pertain to health and wellness will be my focus.
So I’ve spent quite a bit of time just reading. I want to know other peoples’ experiences and how they’ve thought through this area of ministry. Health ministry and faith community nursing are growing areas of healthcare, even if I can’t quite see it. I’m starting to appreciate the amount of effort, theological preparation, and conceptual know-how that many of the pioneers of this movement built from the ground up.
It’s a humble reminder that I’m not an innovator. I am entering into a field of ministry and medicine that has had its foundations already set up and ready to go. I’ve discovered writers and thinkers who have delved into pathways I’ve been exploring in the philosophical and theological arena of things.The grassroots nature of health ministry makes it hard to find any one organization or church that stands as THE pinnacle of this type of endeavor but there are streams of ideas and efforts made that I can follow. Every ministry is as unique as its congregation and community, and that both excites and intimidates me.
I’ve been so compelled to enter this area of ministry and medicine because I have felt this pull toward the ideas of stewardship and shalom. Shalom is an Old Testament word, and the best explanation I have for it comes from a Bible Project video, which you can see here (https://youtu.be/oLYORLZOaZE). It is traditionally translated as Peace in the Bible, but it also connotes things like wholeness, completeness, restoration, reconciliation, and, most importantly, harmony with where God wants us to be.
Stewardship is not too far away from Shalom. However, whereas I would describe Shalom as a state of being, embodied by one who lives in line with God’s purpose, Stewardship is the active effort of utilizing all resources we have available to us in order to live in Shalom. Although both stewardship and shalom are meant to be executed and experienced in all areas of life, my interests are specific to the areas of health ministry, with a greater leaning toward faith community nursing due to my current profession.
Church language surrounding stewardship usually has to do with money. The initial feeling I had at realizing how difficult it was to find literature on just Stewardship, and not just money stewardship, was cynicism. But I began to realize how formative money is in our lives and why the use of the word Stewardship is so closely associated. I also realized that Jesus talked about money. He talked about it A LOT. And it’s honestly one of the easiest ways to parallel the use of the term in the rest of our lives as well.
The best resource I’ve found so far in talking about Stewardship as a “whole life” thing rather than a money thing is a book entitled A Theology for Christian Stewardship by T. A. Kantonen. It was written and published in 1956, and it took a lot of digging to find it. Of course, I’m sure there are other resources about stewardship in all manner of things, but I had a hard time finding one that addresses just this concept.
A few things struck me while reading this book. The first is that Kantonen has a very high view of theologian Martin Luther, which makes sense because he’s definitely Lutheran. The other, though, is that he emphasizes that stewardship comes from a deep pool of love and joy that believers in Christ are able to access due to their restored relationship with God. I had a little trouble really getting this idea for myself until recently, when one of the pastors of our church made an illustration of what financial stewardship is meant to look like to God’s people.
Our pastor’s mother became ill, and due to her frailty, she was unable to go Christmas shopping for her grandkids. She instead gave her son money to pay for gifts for them. So he went out, bought some toys he knew they would like, and wrapped them. On Christmas day, as his children were opening their gifts, he looked over at his mother to watch the look on her face as she found joy in the reactions of his children.
This felt to be the exact right illustration to describe Kantonen’s ideas of what it meant to steward the resources God had given. He addresses several areas of theology where stewardship comes into play, but his basic premise was that a gospel-laden theology of stewardship should come from a place of true relationship and joy in God through Christ. Essentially, it is an act of worship. At the end of our lives, our hope is that we would hear his voice saying “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).
I’ll probably spend some extra time “chewing” through Kantonen’s book. In the meantime, I was able to get my hands on a book published by a professional Christian nursing organization called the Nurses Christian Fellowship. They publish the Journal of Christian Nursing. The book is called Nursing in the Church, written by a collection of authors who specifically write about faith community nursing, aka parish nursing. Although I haven’t finished the book yet, I’ve found so many snippets of wisdom and experience, which has been incredibly energizing and humbling for me. There are so many things I don’t know but there are people out there who have experienced what I eventually want to do.
One chapter that struck me in particular was one of the shorter articles I’ve read so far, written by Judith Allen Shelly entitled “Working Toward Shalom.” In it, she writes that “if we view the person as an integrated whole, created to live in harmony with God, self, others, and the environment, then health means being able to function as God created us to be.”(Pg 45). This doesn’t just mean the utilization of our bodies to energetically serve God. It also means bringing together physical health with the kind of spiritual health practices God intended for us, such as the practice of forgiveness, love, and joy, and the experience of freedom in Christ.
She concludes her article by saying “we work toward shalom – a health that draws us into relationship with God and his people and enables us to function as he created us to be.”
Her writing, though overall quiet in tone, speaks volumes to my soul. Part of it might just be the kind of personality I have; I enjoy harmony. I can envision the bringing together of resources, our selves, the Church, and God’s spirit to bring about wholeness, both to individuals and to communities. This is what drives me. How can I enter into this realm of what God can and is doing in the world? And how do I prepare myself well? How can I utilize this waiting period to its fullest? Because although I feel restless at times, I can also see there’s more to come, God willing.
If you’ve read through this whole blog entry, thanks for meandering through my thoughts with me. If anything resonated with you, or you think there are resources I could look into or health topics that might be helpful for me to address, feel free to leave a comment below! Or send me an email using the form at the way end!
אנו לא מדברים רק על עיסוי קלאסי בחדרה הוליסטי או עיסויים אחרים, אלא גם על תוספי תזונה מחומרים טבעיים, תזונה נכונה באופן כללי, עשיית ספורט.