The Church's Healing Ministry. David Atkinson

can identify a number of primary models of Christian pastoral care in the Church today, each of which can relate to the ministry of healing:

      Proclamation and teaching model

      For some Christians, the primary task of Christian ministry is the proclamation of the gospel, often identified as expository preaching, teaching, and verbal evangelism. Certainly all the thousands who listened to Dr Lloyd-Jones preach in the 1960s at Westminster Chapel heard sermons that brought the text of Scripture in touch with people’s personal needs, and the word of God struck home in a life-changing and often healing way. There can be a very powerful pastoral theology of preaching, but there is also a danger of making this model the sum total of pastoral care. The preacher can hide defensively behind the expository mode, and preaching can become cerebral and didactic in a way that fails to meet people ‘where they are’. In the book of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar in their different ways were no doubt excellent expositors, but they did not help to meet Job’s need: ‘Miserable comforters are you all!’[16]

      Nurture model

      Some patterns of discipleship – ranging from Wesley’s class meetings, to Christian summer camps – provide a Christian approach whereby young people in particular are nurtured and cared for by older like-minded Christians (a model that seems so attractive that the atheist camps supported by Richard Dawkins have taken it over). Fellowship groups, Bible studies, home groups and cell churches can all provide a context not only for worship and service, but for mutual support – sometimes even mutual therapy. This avoids the guru-mentality of the preaching model, but in some churches hierarchies of ‘shepherding’ and authority structures are developed that are not always liberating. There are variants on this model in the sort of support groups set up for survivors of abuse and, in a different way, groups aiming to enable sex offenders to be accountable when they return to the community.

      Service model

      By ‘service’ I mean pastoral ministry that is motivated by compassion and emphasizes the importance of social welfare, and also the political commitment to social justice concerning the environments in which people live. Many church groups and church institutions are involved in community health projects, as advocates for justice in health-care delivery and the social changes that promote healthy living.

      There are organizations such as Welcare in Southwark Diocese, which ‘offers services to families to help improve the quality of their lives, and enables them to fulfil their potential’. There are working groups trying to implement the recommendations of Time for Action, the CTBI Report on survivors of abuse. There are also various global organizations ranging from Christian Aid to Jubilee 2000, which act politically against poverty out of the conviction that each person bears God’s image and has a right to certain basic necessities.

      A further dimension to the service model is the Church’s concern with what has come to be called ‘community health’. This moves concern for health beyond a narrowly medical model, and recognizes dimensions to health that are more public and social. It is concerned with issues relating to the environment, to air pollution, to the availability of clean water, to matters concerning transport. Behind such concerns lies the Christian conviction that there needs to be equality of opportunity for access to the rich resources of God’s world, and an equitable distribution of the things that contribute towards good health. Alongside the Christian concern for individual health, therefore, some churches – inspired by the calling to live out the justice of God in all human affairs – develop local community links for the sharing of resources, are open to the needs of the wider world (particularly those parts that are the most poor and disadvantaged), and seek to contribute to policy-making at community level. Often the Church contributes to debates about education – clearly a key factor in the promotion of good community health – and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle.[17]

      Therapy model