CONGREGATIONAL HEALTH
PROGRAM

Congregational Health Coordinator: Sue Reid
suestmatts(at)hotmail.com

St. Matthew’s United Church is a downtown church
that seeks to serve a diverse congregation and community.
Collectively, the congregation accepts responsibility to support the health of the many individuals and families who live and work in our neighbourhood.

To support this effort, a Congregational Health Program was established in the spring of 2005 to support a holistic health promotion ministry, in which faith and health are clearly linked and spiritual health is central. It is sustained by a belief that health is a function of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions of human life.

The goal of the Congregational Health Program is to improve access to health care through existing programs and to expand sustainable health giving services that will address unidentified unmet needs of diverse populations. In addition the Program attempts to mobilize the health resources of the Church and build connections with local health promotion, disease/injury prevention and health protection programs.

Ongoing Groups and Activities
please contact Sue Reid for more information ~ suestmatts(at)hotmail.com
Spiritual Weigh
Music for Meditation
Lunch and Learn
Walk to Jerusalem

Music for Meditation
Music has powers beyond our understanding. It can soothe or energize; console or inspire. Music therapist Valerie Weeks says, "Music is being confirmed in our time to be a powerfull agent for change at the biological, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive levels of our existence. Songs accompany us from the cradle to the grave, in lullabies, rounds, ballads, through celebration, struggle and loss, to search for meaning and the divine." (from Chor Leoni's Healing Voices).
To provide an opportunity for the healing powers of music, St. Matthew's Congregational Health Program offers a weekly hour of recorded reflective music every Tuesday from noon to one pm. It is our hope that this hour of sharing our sanctuary in the midst of the busy city centre will provide sanctuary for indiviudals in our community -- be they business people, students, visitors to our city or residents of our streets.

Examining how health care is different in a faith community context than in a medical context, the Program seeks to orient itself on the following characteristics:

Life-Long Living
Life is full of variety, because life is full of oppositions. In life there is birth and there is death. But in between the two there is variance. With every breath we are being born and we are dying. Wellness allows us to integrate the extremes – the dynamics of health allow us to move freely between birth and death, learning from each, growing from both. A large part of the accommodation of this process is through learning. Like living, learning is a life-long activity. It does not begin or end at any one stage or age, rather it is a continuous process of growth.

Walking with others
It is the desire to accompany another in the reality of their life that draws us to offer assistance in learning about and caring for our own health and the health of others. We do so in a way that honours and celebrates the uniqueness of each person, and embraces them in loving care.

Engaging others
The experience of the Congregational Health Program will be engaging. It will welcome all persons and involve them in a growth process that may somehow change them.

Two-way door
We envision activities in the Program as having a two-way door. Participants will pass through programs and move out better prepared to live their own life in peace and creativity, and to share their gifts more fully in the world.

Some programs we have offered include an activity challenge, Walking to Jerusalem; a mindful living program, Body-Mind-Spirit Connection; and a learning community for attaining and maintaing a healthy lifestyle, Spiritual Weigh. We also assist persons and families in accessing the health care system and in transition due to changing level-of-care needs.

Please consider joining us in our explorations in wholeness of body, mind and spirit. Contact St. Matthew’s for information on upcoming events.