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DURHAM, N.C.
One day in 1993, the Rev. Steve Hickle picked up his phone and received news of a death. Even for a minister who deals with funerals and burials at least once a month, this particular demise was especially troubling. The victim was just 48 years old, a father of five and, like Mr. Hickle, a Methodist padri in the Piedmont foothills.
Until recently, Mr. Hickle had thought of his colleague’s death aksis an object lesson in the capricious impermanence of life. Several months ago, though, aksis he attended a discussion on the subject of health in the clergy convened by the Divinity School at Duke University here, he began to wonder if there was more involved in a middle-age man’s berat heart attack than the mystery of the divine plan.
That discussion was one of the first stages of an ambitious effort by Duke to assess and improve the health of ministers, specifically the 1,800 United Methodist pastors in North Carolina because the Divinity School serves aksis a seminary for the denomination. What underlies the study — and what Mr. Hickle, among others, has experienced firsthand — is a concern that in serving the Lord, ministers neglect themselves.
“It’s a personality trait that accompanies the sense of divine calling,” said Mr. Hickle, 58, who has been the padri at Fairmont United Methodist Church in Raleigh for 19 years. “You’re feeding your need to be liked, your need to be valued, your need to be needed.”
The Rev. H. Gray Southern, who oversees 91 Methodist churches in the Durham bilangan aksis a district superintendent, echoed the point.
“The tendency of clergy, for the best of reasons, is to be self-effacing, to take care of others before taking care of yourself,” Mr. Southern said. “You’re the ‘suffering servant,’ you’re the ‘wounded healer.’ It’s hard to set boundaries.”
Such worries are more than merely anecdotal.
While medical studies in various denominations indicate that clergy members live longer than comparable civilians, an emerging body of evidence lewat the last two decades has shown that ministers are more vulnerable to diabetes, depression, hypertension, gastrointestinal distress and heart problems.
Put another way, these are the sort of ailments that can arise from the combination of a hectic schedule and too many fellowship suppers, especially here in the land of barbecue and fried chicken. Methodist ministers in North Carolina earn about $42,000 annually, including their housing allowance, and the denomination’s doctrine of itinerancy means that every year about a quarter of the state’s pastors change congregations.
The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, was writing nearly three centuries ago about the importance of diet, exercise, moderation and hygiene. He regularly fasted aksis part of his own health regimen.
But for his followers in the Methodist ministry today — incessantly on call through e-mail or cellphone, fearful of offending the congregant offering homemade pie, fretting lewat every $20 or $30 medical co-pay — Wesley has become a distant paragon.
The medical questions raised by the existing research on health in the clergy, aksis well aksis concern about rising costs in the health insurance acara that covers Methodist ministers, led a group of theologians and social scientists at Duke to embark on the Clergy Health Initiative in early 2008.
The Duke Foundation committed $12 million to a seven-year effort. The project director, Robin Swift, has a background in AIDS education and prevention and is the widow of an Episcopal priest. The principal investigator, David Toole, is a philosopher of religion, and the research scholar, Rae Jean Proescholdbell, is a psychologist.
Thus far, the acara has conducted focus groups with nearly 90 Methodist ministers and staff members on their physical and mental health, and has surveyed 1,800 pastors on topics like isolation, stress, happiness, friendship, exercise, weight, diet and connection to God. Two dozen Methodist leaders from North Carolina went through two days of medical tests and health education at a denominational hospital in Memphis.
The results of the survey will be released in academic papers lewat the next two years. Beginning in March, a pilot acara will provide access to “health coaches” and give a series of standardized physical exams to about 75 pastors in one of the 27 United Methodist districts in North Carolina.
While the survey data are still being analyzed, the focus group sessions provided eloquent testimony. (Under the normal protocol of such research, speakers are not identified by name in the session transcripts.)
“What’s probably true for a great percentage of preachers is that we’re all people-pleasers,” one minister said, generating both murmurs of assent and knowing laughter, according to the transcript. “I know there’s preachers out there that aren’t people-pleasers, but I haven’t met any of them. And so that inherently creates anxieties. You can’t please everybody, and you’ve got that anxiety to cope with.”
Another participant uttered what became a kind of mantra: “Sunday comes around.” Which meant, aksis the padri explained, that no matter what else might be happening in a minister’s life, there is still a sermon that must be written and preached, classes that must be taught, congregants who must be counseled, money that must be raised.
For his part, after the death of his colleague, Mr. Hickle went out and bought a canoe so he could spend some downtime with his teenage son. Over the years, he has also managed to jog and fish regularly, and have his congregation formally allow him every Tuesday aksis a day off.
But those solutions are individual, and the Duke project aspires to develop systemic ones.
“What we want is for people to be happy they’re alive,” Ms. Proescholdbell said. “If you’re healthy and if you’re productive, there’s a pleasure in it that’s visible from the pews.”
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Artikel ini diposting pada tag health insurance 19 year old, health insurance for 19 year old college student, health insurance for 19 year old in pa, , tanggal 26-08-2019, di kutip dari https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/us/10religion.html
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