I have been posting about healthy and unhealthy love and care. Right now the church and world both seem to focus strongly on being nice. I did a bit of research on how to help my church become a healthy place for everyone in every way. Today it is called Wellness inf every way and the experts point to various parts of life that need to be in balance.
Mental
Emotional
Relational
Decisions
Financial
Time
Spiritual
Family
In reading about these ideas I came across some old books and articles that discussed how to design an in-patient psychiatric hospital to be a healing community. It jogged me memory of a comment that O.H. Mowrer made in my presence in 1969. "The early Christian church was the most powerful healing community the world has ever known."
That comment impacted me and I decided to focus on accomplishing it in a local church. Then I read the books on that topic applied to a psych hospital when I was about to open a psych in-patient unit here in Cincinnati. I was quite insecure because I had no idea what to do. People like these men were addicts in desperate need for healing and growth.
What could we do. The most distressed people in the region were coming to us for help. Regular counseling and pills were not enough. Most of them had been in treatment programs before, some several times.
In the Life Way part of the hospital we tried some new and risky things. We were really ignorant of how to run a hospital and that may have been the best preparation because we were not burdened by all the bad models that do not work. I read everything I could about developing a healing community and the results were amazing. Of course it is not amazing to God and His Bible.
These three remain, faith, hope and love but the greatest is love. I CO 13 But how will it work in a Psychiatric Hospital?
What are our options?
1. Do what the rest of the hospitals do. Have a safe place with a lot of medicine and a little counseling.
2. Do in the hospital what our church did. We attempted to build a healing community of grace with God's Truth, His Love, His Gifts and His Power. We chose to do the same in our little Psych Wards.
We taught the residents about building great relationships through better communication, problem solving, renewing the mind, family of origin thinking, prayer, etc. The family unit is the most basic building block in human life. Many times distressed adults had, for one reason or another, a cracked foundation. We charged nothing for the parents, sibling, friends, small group, Pastor, Priest, dog and cat to attend Family Healing sessions. These sessions were very exciting and healing.
The residents loved it. They were treated like students not like crazy people. For example, we discovered that about 95% came from homes where there were no table games played. No cards, no Monopoly, no checkers, no chess. Those games are the best educators in teaching relational skills that exist. So, we bought games and taught all the people to play. It was a riot! Imagine! Christians having fun.
All in all we had a therapeutic community with truth and love mixed with prayer, hugs and accountability. These folks needed Jesus. they needed the Holy Spirit. They needed a loving, merciful, gracious God. We worshiped and worked; prayed and took medicine; loved and confronted.
You can do the same thing at your church. That is where we learned how. The church must learn how to heal and grow Christians into healthy adults. You can read about it in our book Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty and also in Healing Souls Touching Hearts.
More later!
Gary Sweeten
Want to show God's love in a practical way? Start a hospital!
1 comment:
I was meditating this morning about what kind of model really produces mature, positive, loving, healthy people. This is what I came up with:
EBP + PBE = W
EBP is Evidence Based Practice or "Outcomes based on data not theory".
PBE is Practice Based Evidence or "Outcomes based on Wisdom".
It is well known why most people have bitter fights and end up in a divorce. Fights and Divorces are the result of people that cannot deal with simple DIFFERENCES between them. "That is based on research data so we need churches that have ministries that use "Evidence Based Practice" and train young people to interact with great problem solving skills.
We also know from Practice and Wise Insights that such skills are learned BEFORE they get married or soon after marriage.And, they are best learned in small groups. Thus, PRE-MARITAL classes in communication and problem solving are wonderful for prevention of Toxic Conflict and Divorce.
We taught them in the hospital but why wait? I retired to teach and train because I was tired of being a remedial teacher at $100.00 an hour.
Post a Comment