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    Partners in Care: Medicine and Ministry Together
    Partners in Care: Medicine and Ministry Together
    Partners in Care: Medicine and Ministry Together
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Partners in Care: Medicine and Ministry Together

    By Frederick Reklau, R. Scott Perry and Martin E. Marty

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    The needs for and the benefits of holistic health care--care that extends to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of individuals--have been well known for 2,500 years or so. But still, to quote the late Rodney Dangerfield, some caregivers "don't get no respect." Fred Reklau is out to change that with this book, offered as an exploration of the synergies possible among those who care for persons. In the 1980s he wrote the theses that formed the core of this book. Since then they have helped many, in groups and singly, to see their work in a new light. Chaplains, pastors, parish nurses, lay caregivers, hospice workers--all will rejoice to read this heartfelt plea to elevate them to equal status with the vital care-giving services performed by physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other members of the medical professions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherResource Publications
    Release dateMay 1, 2010
    ISBN9781498272698
    Partners in Care: Medicine and Ministry Together
    Author

    Frederick Reklau

    Frederick Reklau served as a Lutheran pastor-the last nine as a trained intentional interim pastor-for over forty years, most of them in Chicago and its suburbs. This is his first book.

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      Book preview

      Partners in Care - Frederick Reklau

      Partners in Care

      Medicine and Ministry Together

      Frederick Reklau

      with a discussion guide by R. Scott Perry

      Foreword by Martin E. Marty

      Partners in Care

      Medicine and Ministry Together

      Copyright © 2010 Frederick Reklau. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

      Wipf & Stock

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      isbn 13: 978-1-60899-628-5

      eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7269-8

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      To Sheryl and Paul, whose lives taught me much of what I have learned,

      and to my wife, Tecla, who bears me up always and in every way.

      Foreword

      Pastor Reklau here writes for chaplains, parish nurses, those who regularly call to help provide spiritual care for those who are ill, and especially for fellow pastors. I wonder whether many readers in that vocational company will not be entertaining some yearnings like mine: that this little book might also be read by those who occupy the cate-gory everybody else. Everybody else in this case includes believers and unbelievers alike, people who are ill or who face illness or who know that they will, who care for others or know that they should. My wish relates to two purposes. First, wisdom on these pages gained from decades-long pastoral work and reflection includes comment on theological, philosophical, and therapeutic themes from which all can profit. So lightly does Reklau wear his learning and so readily does he clothe his ponderings in story form, the stories being real-life incidents, that one may not even recognize the many formal disciplines that stand behind their simple expression here.

      There is a second element in this dream or wish or yearning: Without the author’s ever stopping to call attention to himself or his calling, he provides scores of illustrations that demonstrate how crucial the pastoral vocation is. He never stops to say, Look at me! or Pay attention! I am going to teach you something you may not know about my profession. He simply tells a story, enhanced by biblical and theological lore, which reveals much about a transaction known to few outside the professions listed above. These years the headlines ordinarily portray not the faithful and crucial work of a million or three spiritual caregivers, but instead feature sexually abusing priests, huckstering and wayward television evangelists. They overlook the clergy and their professional kin down the block whose ministries and ministrations are often ignored, dismissed, and even derided. In some eyes, the impulse to care and to exercise care seems wimpish in a macho, high-achieving world.

      Then one notices, or learns from other sources after curiosity has been aroused: This is a profession whose agents call on those to whom they have direct responsibility and those to whom they have none, whose beds happen to lie in their path. They call and help heal—Reklau offers many illustrations and definitions of healing—but do not send a bill. Beneficiaries of such ministries do not often publicize these sick-room transactions. The public knows only what they see on television screens: portrayals of bedside conversations featuring physicians and nurses. When have you last seen a pastor or chaplain playing a role in a drama or a documentary—even though, as many patients can testify, they spend more and often more significant time with patients than do medical professionals (who are their allies, not their competitors or rivals, by the way!).

      Realistically, I know that this book will be used chiefly in the pastoral care company, but I spent time on the larger public so that those in that company who read and use this book will be reminded that what they do is fateful and has public significance.

      Now to the plot of the book: I used my computer’s Word Search feature to look for the word face in Reklau’s book. It often appeared as part of the word facet, which he favors, or the verb as in to face. But as a physical feature of people involved in being cured and/or healed, faces show their face in only one scene, in a prison, where the pastor-author reports on what he saw in the prisoners’ faces.

      Why seize on that part of the anatomy? I’d answer: because it is featured in the writings of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, for whom the face symbolizes the spiritual dimension and point of access to the other human. Some of the patients whom Pastor Reklau and users of this book face do not have physical faces showing: They are masked with all kinds of technical instruments and tubes. But the reader will know what I mean when referring to the symbolism of the face. I often quote a line that condenses the negative side of the plot of this book, the word of a patient who said, My physician cured me, but she did not heal me. She never once looked in my face. I do not have to elaborate on the meaning and extensions of that statement. Even the physically blind can testify to the difference it makes when a caregiver as healer is addressing him, listening to her, focusing on just that one human being who is in need. Such a caregiver may contribute to a healing conversation carried on by a professional or even a casual visitor who deals with the patient as a Thou and not an It, a person and not a number, a soul and not a case.

      Pastor Reklau’s often cleverly but always care-fully stated theses show an awareness of all this, and permit readers, many of whom (I hope) will be using them and this book in congregational study groups, classes, or as preparation for ministries, to make their own applications of the face metaphor. Rather than spill out the whole plot in one major thesis-statement, the author lets it emerge pieces by pieces, thesis by thesis. The pondering and quietly given advice comes as musical compositions often come, as theme and variations, to work their cumulative effect even as each part makes its contribution. Taken together, the theses can serve as an outline for a course or a guide for personal growth.

      When first I opened the manuscript and saw the use of the term holistic up front, I admit to having been wary lest, like so many twenty-first century writings, it reduced the concept to clichés, as so many references to things holistic or wholistic often do. Reklau instead uses the word up front as a code for what gets treated not as slogan but what does address mind, soul, body and person-in-isolation and person-in-communion. Bravo.

      If my earlier word suggested that people of secular orientation could profit if they looked in on this spiritual conversation, I did not mean that they would have it easy, thinking that Reklau wanted to meet them more than halfway, in the swamp where clear theological affirmations get watered down, compromised, and turned to mush. If this is a little compendium of "practical theology, be it noted that it is first of all practical theology, which means talk about God." Thank God.

      Martin E. Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, a Lutheran minister who served twelve years as a parish pastor before he taught Christian history for thirty-five years.

      Acknowledgments

      First, I acknowledge with thanks and admiration Dr. Martin E. Marty, whose book, Health and Medicine in the Lutheran Tradition, sparked the thinking that led to the theses that form the core of this book.

      Scott Perry has walked with me, step-by-step, especially in the last stages of the journey of turning the theses into a book. He was my editor, tough and tender by turns, as needed. Mark Williamson contributed a meticulous and helpful scrutiny of the text, as well.

      Many who are or have been leaders at the intersection of faith and health care gave me early and ongoing encouragement: Jim Christian, Chuck Dull, Norma Cook Everist, Dick Hardel, Rick Herman, Don Tubesing, and Jerry Wagenknecht. Special mention is due to Tammy Devine, who, as Diaconal Minister and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Wellness Manager, has introduced the theses to hundreds of ELCA pastors, seminarians, parish nurses, and others over the past few years through seminars, a website, and a pamphlet, That You May Be Well.

      Physicians who exemplify caregiving in the best sense inspired me and give me hope for a true partnership between medicine and ministry: Douglas Anderson, a neurosurgeon, and Pauline Harding, a primary care practitioner.

      Some whose strongest credential—though by no means the only one—was simple friendship affirmed and supported the effort: Reuben Baerwald, Peggy Cassens, Nell Ferguson, Peg Haar, Pat Pape, Lynn Perry, Lois Robinson, my in-laws Ray and Polly Sund, and Mark Sund.

      Last, and coming full circle, my thanks

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