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Clergy

Pastor’s Health Fair

By December 17, 2009No Comments

The statistics on the health of pastors is growing increasingly disturbing. There are some actions that a Presbytery or even a community of churches could take to address that problem. A major action would be to help arrange a health fair strictly for pastors in a contiguous community. You might do this in sections of a presbytery but you also could make a positive witness to the community if executives from the various denominations in an area coordinated such an activity.

The first step would be to approach a local hospital and talk with them about providing health personnel for such an event. At the event you would be offering to check blood pressure, sugar in the blood, cholesterol count, weight, etc. They may even have portable sonogram machines or other machines to check other health issues.

In addition you would want health personnel to provide tables with literature and advice on signs to look for with respect to heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc. An additional advantage for the pastor is that s/he would be better informed about what to do if a member of the congregation showed such symptoms. There could also be a demonstration of mouth to mouth resuscitation, use of a defibrillator, etc.

If you are near an educational medical center, they probably have a division that would be glad to work with you on designing such an event. You might even get someone to include some brief seminars on healthy cooking, home exercise programs, stress reduction programs, etc. It would be worth checking with the local branch of a large health insurance industry like Blue Cross to see if they would help sponsor such an event.

If you did it ecumenically, you could have sufficient numbers to not have anyone drive too far. Plus you probably could get some good media coverage for a positive cooperative event among the churches.

Because it is focused on pastors and professional church staff, it would be good to have some elements built into the design that address the unique aspects of working in a church and the resultant pressures of such a profession.

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