Recapturing Supervision

How may overarching supervision of the medical care by Christians be recaptured by the Church?

1. Church discipline of physicians who are practicing gross sins. So you have no abortionists in your congregation? Do you have those who refer for abortion?

2. Church discipline of members who are practicing gross sins. It is neither kind nor healthy to overlook gross sin.

3. Preaching the Word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present. This is not the same as locating biblical "support" for current medical practice.

4. Teaching the word to the Church, with applications to health where they are present.

5. For #3 & 4 above, the issues which relate to health taught in Scripture include: "parenting," marital relations, indebtedness, work habits, Sabbath-keeping, addictionism, education, etc.

6. A diaconal ministry instructed and involved in helping Church members ask the right questions of physicians during illnesses, politely but persistently.

7. Visitation of the sick. For the hospitalized ill, seeing to it that appropriate visitation is taken seriously by the hospital staff.

8. Anointing with oil and prayer for the sick.

9. Developing a working relationship between physicians and pastors in which the pastor is not the junior partner, for the identification of the source(s) or patients problems.

10. Nouthetic counseling for Church members. De-medicalize the management of problems-in-living through the use of cooperation with a physician who appreciates the proper position of medicine in the health equation. Not everything felt in the body is originating from the body.

11. Escape the straightjacket. The medical profession's viewpoint on health and disease is very narrowly conceived.

12. Physicians at every level of the system need to have an appreciation of the prior probabilities of disease, and to use it in helping patients prioritize their health issues among the other issues of life.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers