Jun 26, 2019
Barb Green, Parish Nurse
Milton, WI
People who suffer from chronic pain often receive well-meaning advice that quite frankly is not helpful. They may feel isolated and depressed because they cannot participate in activities as they once did. At the same time they may smile, laugh, and praise God while not looking sick at all. This causes others to misunderstand their pain and ignore them, leaving them with the idea that no one cares. Someone with chronic pain often would like help but may not know what they want or how to ask for assistance. How can any of us help someone who doesn’t know what they need? In the midst of this pain and misunderstanding the church can be a healing presence. Here are some ways that we as a church body can be helpful.
1. Create awareness. Educating members helps them be more mindful of those who are suffering from ongoing pain. Teaching how to offer loving prayers and encouraging support instead of medical advice and criticism helps avoid hurtful interactions.
2. Establish accountability. A team of greeters, ushers, deacons, or a hospitality group can reach out to those who miss consecutive Sabbaths.
3. Organize a Helping Hands ministry with one team leader who serves as a liaison to mobilize volunteers and assess needs. This team can provide help with meals, housecleaning and landscaping. Running errands, babysitting, and sending cards of encouragement are also helpful.
4. Offer specific help. Instead of waiting to be asked to help, suggest specific tasks that can be done on a regular basis. This helps create a safe zone for those who need assistance but don’t want to risk rejection by asking or feeling like a burden. Suggestions include: “I made dinner/grabbed a latte for you. It’s on your front porch.” “Can I come over and pray for you or with you? I won’t stay.” “I paid for a housecleaner to come to your house this week.”
5. Affirm the usefulness of each member of the body of Christ. Missing church often means missing announcements, events, and service opportunities. Invite those who are home-bound to serve from home, provide a website with updated information, use weekly email blasts to help them stay connected.
6. Be flexible and extend grace. For those who suffer from chronic pain, having a good day can morph into a crummy day within minutes. Knowing volunteers are flexible and understanding can help ease the stress and embarrassment when they need to cancel at the last minute.
7. Give presence. Offer hugs, meals, regular visits, home Communion. Listen without needing to fix the problem. Provide company to doctor’s visits or treatments. Regularly remind them that they are not alone, they are seen, they have dignity, and that they do not have to hide. Sit beside them as they cry or listen while they talk about their loss.
8. Offer to host a support group for those with chronic illness in your community.
God came not to save his people from storm and suffering but to save them through storm and suffering (Lesley Leland Fields). What if we actually took our place as the body of Christ and helped bring healing and wholeness into the lives of those who suffer chronic pain? What if we took it upon ourselves to help strengthen their faith in their long, dark days of suffering? This would minister with dunamis1 to their weary souls. This would powerfully declare the gospel to a hurting world.
This is part of our mission—not to provide advice or well-meaning reasons for pain—but to assure the hurting that God has not forgotten them and that we have not either.
(Adapted from Church Health Reader Winter 2019)
1 Greek dunamis ‘power’