Abstract
With increased depersonalization, compartmentalization, cost and specialization of health care in the West and the healthcare disparities and expanding influence of the growing Church in the global South, this book is written at an ideal time. This compilation recaptures a scripturally-informed integrative view of human beings in their infirmity and brokenness and the need for the Church to better understand her call to minister to the whole person in their unique biological, sociological, environmental, cultural, psychological and spiritual contexts. I observed this work emerging from the collaborative interaction of scholars and practitioners from the Center for Health in Mission (www.centerforhim.org) and the West Coast Healthcare Mission and Ministry Conference at Fuller Theological Seminary in California, USA.
Bryant L Myers, PhD, former director of World Vision, who gives the overall framework of thought and purpose for the book, first traces a brief historical overview of the theological underpinnings and involvement of the Church in history toward human flourishing. He delineates current challenges in global health and the need for a new major contribution to global health based on extending health systems and services to the poor, reawakening the Church to a sound theology and anthropology of wholeness.
A commemorative chapter by Dr Daniel Fountain describes the application of corrective whole-person team-based approaches to healing he championed as part of God’s plan to bring all things together in the physical and spiritual realms (Eph 1:10).
Dr Myers presents theological reflections which include a helpful diagrammed framework of the effects of sin in the Fall impairing all relationships, and the call to “mitigate the impact of sin and work for the common good,” by cooperating with God’s work of redeeming and restoring his creation. This restoration moves toward God-intended shalom or health, wholeness and flourishing, as God’s “peace-workers” who can only cooperate with his work of healing, recognizing that shalom will not be realized (I would add fully-realized) until the Consummation. Meanwhile, the Church is called to attribute healing to God, to acknowledge human integrity and creativity, to restore relationships as a “suffering community with a healing message,” as central to the gospel and the misseo Dei.
Myers then builds a case for the full witness of the whole gospel as a pyramid to include proclamation as integral with presence, restoration and signs. He affirmed Newbigin’s observations that evangelism in the early church was the “second act – not the first,” as observers of God’s healing action ask questions to which the gospel is the answer.
A case is made for the Church to be mobilized to help children at risk by strengthening dignity, parental love, nurture, societal responsibility, generational hope and congregational blessing, and to be part of God’s mission. There are warnings regarding popular drug-based short-term medical mission programs, and an alternative description of a health fair model of screening and education that is participatory and problem-solving, community-based and transferable. Workers in inner-city Los Angeles, describe “kingdom health care” as overcoming barriers such as emotional distance by entering into kinship, in the difficult-to-measure, slow work of God amid brokenness.
A psychologist gives a powerful theological application for trauma recovery in clinical and Church settings. The restoration of shalom can occur when one realizes the universality of suffering, that Christ identifies with suffering, and the Holy Spirit empowers to forgive, interpreting trauma in light of Scripture and regaining identity through restoring relationships in community and into eternity.
In care for people with HIV/AIDS, a well-described curse-like complex disease that dramatically affects all relationships (Wright, 2006), the authors present a fascinating approach of accompaniment toward shalom consisting of providing sanctuary, identity, justice, caring (even toward the ungrateful), obedience, healing and reconciliation, which becomes real in word and deed. Another author wisely addresses the dualistic (body and soul) Western paradigm and proposes a needed deeper biblical understanding of health for the global Church, whole-person care, kingdom partnerships based on mutual trust and humility, avoiding harm and dependency, and a call to excellence.
To promote shalom at end of life, research is presented on the physiology of starvation and dehydration and even human touch in care-giving, advocating for a hospice approach and against interfering in “God’s magnanimous design” by resorting to artificial nutrition and hydration in cases of futility or to euthanasia. A Christ-inspired lament approach with a “readiness to act for other’s healing and the willingness to lament sins’s real effects,” eschews professional detachment, and embraces hope by becoming vulnerable to the suffering of others. For the practitioner with burnout, practical steps for restoration of shalom for the self, the community and organizations are given.
Based on inner-city ministry, five overlapping spiritual practices are presented – hospitality, encounter, compassion, Christian witness and justice – giving an excellent framework for a sensitive, humble, empowering approach to urban blight. This empowering approach is applied to two other case studies with shared ownership, bridging worldviews, participatory learning, focusing on prevention, and community-based goal setting and evaluation with a call to every church to mobilize lay workers for the health of their communities.
Community Health Evangelism (CHE) is then articulated, based on core principles of development (instead of relief), wholism, local ownership and initiative, participatory learning, multiplication and movement and volunteerism.
The book concludes with a call for an identity-transforming movement for Christian healthcare providers, the oppressed and those they witness to; an incarnational movement marked by co-suffering and cultural sensitivity; an integrative movement to recover a thoroughly biblical world view and whole-person anthropology, to address psychological disintegration and its effect on global health and to advocate for systemic social justice; and an innovative movement which boldly challenges existing models and assumptions.
Through multidisciplinary voices, this well-written compilation gives practical and compelling application of the concepts of God’s work through his followers for the restoration of health and shalom in broken communities around the world. Though there are other frontiers and innovations in the health mission movement not addressed, the book accomplishes its goal of setting a sustainable and thoughtful framework on which to build further innovative service and research.