Once you have raised the awareness of the challenge of ministry and its demands through a presbytery event, then you need to invite all present, and also those churches not present, to join in the Healthy Clergy Make Healthy Churches movement. (HCMHC). If you want to emphasize the importance of what they are doing, you might even want to have a liturgical event in which people fill out prepared commitment cards and place them in an offering plate.
You will need to decide on the methods of communication that will take place in between presbytery meetings. You can make use of your web page, but should also have a contact in each church for more direct communication. This information could be part of the pledge card they will out. for their part, The COM should indicate that they will follow up the presbytery event with specific suggestions on how the congregation and the pastor can act to support the health of the clergy. You might indicate that the emphasis for the first quarter will be the physical health of church leadership.
Your first communication could be about inviting the church leadership to have a health conversation. At a session meeting, a facilitator would the elders to make a list of some of the bad habits that challenge the health of all leaders in the congregation –eg, lack of sleep, too little exercise, poor eating habits, etc.
Next, engage in a brief reflection on the faith issues that speak to our care of our physical bodies. Explore the connection between our religious journey and our health journey. What is it in our faith that speaks to our care of our bodies?
Then pass out some blank 4 X 6 cards. Ask elders and pastor to take time in silent prayer to reflect on and identify a counter action that they think if they did it regularly would contribute to their personal health. At the end of the prayer time, each is asked to write down on both halves of the card the action they identified but without placing their names on the cards. They then tear the card in half, keeping one half and turning the other in.
The cards will be compiled into an anonymous list to be reviewed at the next meeting. At that next meeting, each member is asked to place the number from the list that identifies their action on the card and then using a scale of 1 – 10 with 10 representing complete success, rating how they have done this past month in taking the action that would contribute to their health.
Each month, at their regular meeting for a year, the same procedure is followed and a graph of success in each area is recorded. After each time of sharing, there is a time of prayer in which the person rededicates him or herself to practicing their designated action for the year. The church staff as well as the leadership should be included in this communal effort to address the physical health of our journey of faith.
After a couple of months, you might want to ask your congregational contacts to share how the event is going.
