A church Health Ministry? Yes! Because health and healing are basic to the life of Faith, individually and congregationally.
That is the stance of Hope Church’s Mission and its Health Ministry – fully aware that health and healing involves the physical, emotional, mental and relational aspects of our lives. On the compassionate arm of Hope Church, we are the thumb trying to reach these four areas. And we walk hand-in-hand with the Congregational Care Ministry.
What do we uniquely hope to accomplish? To create in us, individually and together, a deeper, richer, fuller sense of wholistic well-being characterized by living in harmony with God’s Grace. We want to make this real as we inform, alert, create awareness, enlarge understanding, provide experiences, and stimulate involvement.
How do we attempt to do this? Let us count the ways:
- We address a variety of healthful areas each month through articles in Hope Church News.
- We offer a series of Sunday Christian Education classes focusing on a wide range of health issues through specialists, discussion, media presentations, and interactive sharing.
- We provide a constant bulletin board around various themes year-round in the Gathering Area, with available books and helpful pamphlets touching many areas of need.
- We’ve established a “Health” section in the Church library for your use on various areas of our life experience, and recommend books and reading sources on regular occasions.
- We get downright practical in the weekly church bulletin with tips, clues and cues for daily life application.
- We offer blood pressure screenings every month in the library usually after worship on pizza Sundays.
- In the early Fall we sponsor an evening opportunity at the church for flu and pneumonia shots through Health Department nurses.
- We oversee the care of First Aid kits, the defibrillator, and the many kinds of health equipment on loan from the church.
- We promote and hold several Blood Drives yearly, usually in conjunction with First United Methodist Church.
- We challenge your involvement in your own health: through the weekly Flexibility and Balance Class, an exercise class targeted towards older adults that is offered on Thursdays at 1:30 p.m. in the Commons under Maxine DeBruyn’s experienced expertise; through the “Go and Glow” summertime exercise challenge; through encouraging church members to engage in joint and group fitness opportunities.
- We offer the bi-weekly R.E.S.T. group for those involved in caregiving, under the care of our church nurse, Donita Robards.
- We meet monthly as a Ministry on Thursday evenings to discuss, plan, oversee, and sense needs of persons and the congregation. Our church nurse, Donita Robards, reports to or consults with us – always in general terms to protect all confidences.
And who are “We”? Present ministry members include Ann Anderson, Eloise Van Heest (chair), Dick Noordijk, Ellen Hale, Maxine DeBruyn, Earl Laman, Tom Mullens, shepherded by Pastor Jill Russell. We are all professionally and/or experientially concerned and involved to bring the spiritual perspective Jesus offered, “I have come that you may have life, and have it richly” – into our life and breath as persons and families within the Body of Christ and beyond. We welcome your suggestions, sense of needs, counsel, life-wisdom and personal involvement to our Health Ministry.