Rediscovering a Ministry of Health

Parish Nursing as a Mission of the Local Church

Wordsworth

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498205962
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

It is not possible to look at the ministry of Jesus without noticing his concern for the poor and the sick. He not only had a huge sense of compassion for people who were suffering, but sent people out to heal the sick and tell them the Kingdom of God is near them. This concern for health and wholeness has inspired Christians through the ages as they have cared for the sick, founded hospitals, and been at the forefront of public health movements. In the nineteenth century, the church was one of the major influencers in initiating ministries of health, both through the work of its own deaconesses and the involvement of its members as they felt a sense of vocation to nursing and public health work. Florence Nightingale was a theologian and statistician as well as being a nurse leader. However, with the advent of state health provision and private health insurance schemes, the role of the local church in health has diminished. This book describes a simple way for churches to re-engage with health ministry and presents evidence that underlines not only a Biblical authenticity for its place in the mission of a local church, but also a compelling rationale for its implementation. It will be of interest to church leaders and all those involved in health care.

1

Introduction

Parish nursing is defined as “the intentional integration of the practice of faith with the practice of nursing so that people can achieve wholeness in, with, and through the community of faith in which parish nurses serve.”1 It may also be known as “Faith Community nursing,”2 and sometimes “Congregational nursing,” “Church nursing,” or “Pastoral nursing.” In its contemporary form, parish nursing began in Chicago in 1985 with six pilot nurses; there are now around twelve thousand trained parish nurses in twenty-three countries across the world.

Revd. Dr. Deborah Patterson was Executive Director of the International Parish Nurse Resource Centre when it was based in Saint Louis, Missouri. She notes that interest in and research work around this topic is spreading.3 However, much of the academic research so far is in the US, and relates to the application of the practice to the physical health of clients. Very little research has so far been done elsewhere, and there has been no attention specifically given to any mission potential that might be connected with the appointment of a parish nurse in a local church.

As a regional minister/mission enabler in the Central Association of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, a major part of my ministry was to explore with churches in four counties of England the theological foundation, contextual relevance and effectiveness of various mission initiatives that may help them reach out to the communities in which they are placed, or with which they engage. My background in nursing and community health, together with my growing conviction that the gospel value of wholeness includes both physical and spiritual aspects of health, has often led me to consider whether or not there might be a role for a local church in health ministry. Throughout its history, the National Health Service has hired church premises for child health clinics and occasionally commissioned third sector organizations to provide volunteer services to augment primary care, but in the light of recent government proposals to involve charities in the development of the “Big Society” this issue has become more prominent.4 Some churches have seen this as an opportunity to engage more readily with the community. Others have shown some reticence, fearing that the contribution of churches may become a substitute for community services that should be provided by the government.

Health ministry began to be promoted as far back as the 1960s; one of the recommendations of the Tübingen consultations, set up by the World Council of Churches in 1964 and 1967 was that the local church should be the primary agent for healing, even with the legitimate existence of specialized Christian institutions like hospitals, primary health services and special healing homes.5

In September 2000, developments in parish nursing in the US were brought to my attention, and I began to investigate this topic from a theological perspective. My interest resulted in the writing of a dissertation for a Masters degree in Applied Theology.6 This sought to offer theological reflections on whether parish nursing was an appropriate mission opportunity for churches in England. In order to address that question, the following areas were investigated:

• the practice of parish nursing as it stood then in America, Canada, and Australia;

• the historical and philosophical roots of the movement;

• a Biblically-based theology of health;

• the context for missional activity in England;

• current national health service objectives and needs from a nursing perspective.

I conducted a literature search including textbooks and papers that had been written around the principles and practice of parish nursing; theological approaches to health; missiology; and papers from the UK government’s Department of Health.

The conclusions of that earlier study were firstly that although both the church and health contexts in England were completely different from those observed in the US, there were core values and principles in the theory and practice of parish nursing that could be appropriate for English churches; and secondly, that such an initiative might sit well with the churches’ concern for wholistic mission alongside the current national interest in spiritual care.7 I listed some recommendations for further work. These included further UK conferences, the consideration of different terminology for a UK context, the need to disseminate information at all levels of church and health service life, the setting up of pilot studies, the establishment of a resource for delivery, funding and support, and the need to contribute to the body of knowledge that was beginning to grow around the practice.

Eight years after the first work was completed, these recommendations had all been followed through: I had been encouraged both by tutors and by the chief nurse at the Department of Health to develop seven pilot projects in the UK. The results of these pilots and subsequent projects had prompted me to begin an initiative to promote parish nursing in the UK as a part of enabling churches in mission. This included the founding and development of a new charity, “Parish Nursing Ministries UK,” which now provides training and coordination for parish nurses in more than eighty churches of different denominations in England, Scotland, and Wales. Nurses in both Germany and Kenya had begun parish nurse programs in their own countries as a direct result of the work here in the UK. Interest from both churches and nurses was continuing to grow, basic training courses were being offered twice yearly, and a new Masters level module “Exploring Parish Nursing,” validated by the University of Chester, was delivered for the first time in 2010. A varied research program around parish nursing that began in the US was now beginning to develop in other countries and in the UK. It was now time to evaluate the initiative.

The UK charity’s mission statement is as follows:

Parish Nursing Ministries UK will develop and promote the concept, standards and scope of practice, and implementation of parish nursing within the UK, thereby enabling Christian denominations and churches to express their whole person health ministries with individuals and communities.8

This has been done first by creating interest at local church level, then recruiting, training, and resourcing Christians who are registered nurses with community experience to work as part of a church’s ministry team in a voluntary or paid capacity. These “Parish” nurses seek to lead a team of church volunteers in a wholistic health ministry that complements state provision and offers spiritual support as core to practice. My earlier work had established the appropriateness of the ministry of parish nursing for English churches. This book describes a research dissertation that set out to ascertain whether or not parish nursing has made a difference to the mission of local churches, and if so, how this has happened.

Such a study has begun the process of establishing an academically rigorous UK contribution to the body of knowledge around parish nursing that will inform and improve future development both in the UK and beyond.

It may help to discern ways forward for the ongoing implementation of parish nursing in the UK, with particular application for ministers and mission enablers as they seek to increase the outreach of the churches; the charity and its regional coordinators as they support this; theological colleges and denominations as they review ministry training and recognition processes for parish nurses; and primary health-care teams as they consider the contribution that churches may make to the health of a local community.

Areas of influence of parish nursing

The scope of the ministry of parish nursing will be described in more detail in chapter two. It claims to have an effect in three areas of influence by encouraging9

• nurses to reclaim the spiritual dimension of health care;

• health care systems to treat the patient as a whole;

• churches to restore the health and healing mission of the gospel.

My work in enabling churche...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Tables and Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Parish Nursing: A Developing Ministry
• Chapter 3: Towards an Understanding of the Mission of an English Church
• Chapter 4: Identification of a Method to Address the Research Question
• Chapter 5: Findings Relating to the Fifteen Parish Nurse Churches
• Chapter 6: Comparisons with the Control Group
• Chapter 7: Significance of the Findings
• Chapter 8: Rediscovering a Ministry of Health
• Appendix 1: Letter of Introduction
• Appendix 2: Pre-interview Survey Sent to Ministers
• Appendix 3: Semi-structured Interview Questions: Ministers
• Appendix 4: Semi-structured Interview Questions: Nurses
• Appendix 5: Interventions by Category
• Bibliography