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Service suggestions

Introduction

Healthcare Sunday has been established by a group of Christian organisations involved in healthcare who want to encourage the whole church to be more involved in praying for health concerns.

The aims of this annual event are to inspire:

Awareness

  • to promote understanding among Christians of the value of all human life and the need for society to maintain Christian integrity in all issues relating to healthcare;

Prayer

  • to promote continuing prayer support for good healthcare in our nation;

Care and support of professional and voluntary carers

  • to stimulate Christians to continuing support for all carers;

Community responsibility and action

  • to stimulate Christians to recognise that healthcare is a shared community responsibility and thus to take appropriate local and national action.

Jesus’ ministry here on earth focused on helping those in need. Often the need was presented in the form of ill-health and disease but Jesus always detected the underlying need for repentance and faith.

Christian Healthcare workers are the presence of Jesus to the sick and suffering in our generation. They may not be able to meet all their physical needs but in Christ we have the answer to each patient’s deepest needs for forgiveness and genuine wholeness of body, mind and spirit.

There are many possible settings and time-slots that could be available for you to mark Healthcare Sunday. This could range from a full service to a short prayer slot in an already full meeting. This part of the pack will try to provide a range of suggestions to meet most of those possibilities. Feel free to pick and mix, expand or shorten, to suit your needs.

Remember too, these are just suggestions and starters to help you generate your own ideas. Use the other papers in the pack for detail and prayer points. Some things will work better than others, depending on the setting, size of the group (and whether there is an ‘R’ in the month - which there is in October!). Do experiment and let us know what was a success - or failure.

Service outline

  • Introduction
  • Meet & Introduce Healthcare Workers
  • Overseas Focus
  • Ethical Focus
  • Challenge to Congregation
  • Sermon
  • Intersperse with hymns/prayers etc. to suit your liturgy.

Meet the workers

You will probably want to make this as broad as possible by including paramedics, social workers, administration & ancillary staff and those who are full-time care-givers for relatives or friends.

Ask each Christian healthcare worker in your fellowship to be prepared to stand up, with their colleagues, and give the following details:

  • Their name;
  • Where they work (voluntary or paid);
  • A description of what they do;
  • How long they have been attending this particular church (many may have been unable to attend regularly because of working unsocial hours).

What others have done

Healthcare Sunday is celebrated in hospitals as well as churches. The Christian healthcare staff in one hospital in Northern Ireland have organised a Healthcare Sunday Service there for the past three years. Healthcare staff throughout the Area Board are invited and as many Christian staff as possible asked to take part in the service.

The results have been greater than any of the organisers imagined. It has provided a venue for scattered healthcare staff to meet where they have been blessed and encouraged, but the greatest cause for celebration each year has been those who have accepted Jesus as their personal Saviour. Not content to remain local, in 2005 the group had the service broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster’s Sunday Morning Service.