April 17, 2000
Congregational nurse discovers
ministry makes good medicine
___By Sherri Brown
___Georgia Baptist Convention
___PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. (ABP)--He was 91 years old when the doctors told him they had discovered a malignancy. The family was scheduled to meet with the doctor to discuss options. Knowing the meeting would be difficult, they asked their minister to accompany the family for the consultation.
___Ruth McCommon, wearing her lab coat and nursing pins, agreed.
___McCommon is a new kind of minister, a congregational nurse.
___She is known throughout her church--First Baptist Church in Peachtree City, Ga.--as the lady with the lab coat.
___"People stop me in the hall and say, 'The doctor said this. What do you think about it?'" she says. Her job is simply to be a bridge between faith and health.
___When she makes hospital or nursing-home visits, her conversations are a mixture of medical jargon and spiritual guidance. When someone is sent to hospice, she can help him or her understand what to expect.
___When a young mother is at a Bible study and finds herself sick, her friends take her to McCommon. When someone is dying, she is often the first minister family members call.
___"I'm a minister," she is quick to say. "I'm not a nurse who works in a church."
___Her qualifications for ministry came early in life and hard. Her third child died at four months from SIDS. Her husband died at 40 after five years of fighting cancer. At 38, she found herself a widow with two teenage daughters, one a diabetic, the other suffering from epilepsy.
___When her children were raised, she finished her nursing education, went to seminary and headed for the mission field in Africa. While serving there she contracted malaria and hepatitis C--both diseases she still must deal with.
___"I learned early what sustains me," she says. "Compassion drives me to do what I do."
___"Ruth is able to do things I can't do, things I don't know how to do," says Steve Bingham, senior pastor at the Georgia church.
___"Some pastors feel threatened when someone ministers to 'their' people," Bingham admits. "My main concern is what are we doing for that person? Are they getting the support they need?"
___"A congregational nurse can do things way beyond what I can do," he says. "I hug their necks, read Scripture and pray. But Ruth goes way beyond that. She enhances our ministry."
___In 1983, a chaplain in a Lutheran hospital in Chicago and his daughter, a nurse, conceived the idea of a "parish nurse."
___Word quickly spread of the spiritual-medical position, and other groups began the program that originated in a hospital. In 1995, Georgia Baptist Health Care System began developing the program.
___Currently, six congregational nurses work in Georgia churches.
___The Baptist health care system provides supervision and training for nurses as well as organizational guidance for churches.
___The nurses typically are hired as part-time ministers, working from 16 to 24 hours a week, and earn a salary comparable to the community norm for professional nurses.
___All congregational nurses take clinical pastoral education as part of their training and are required to take the congregational nurse preparation course offered by the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing every July.
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