Mennonite Church USA

Healing in the high desert.
Living with mental illness.
Resource advocates support congregational ministries.


Healing in the high desert

By Neal Anderson

Albuquerque, N.M. (Mennonite Church USA)Healing – it’s an ancient spiritual concept that one Mennonite Church USA congregation in New Mexico has taken to heart and put into the hands of its members.

Anointing and healing prayers have long been components of services at Albuquerque Mennonite Church (AMC), an urban congregation in this Southwestern city of nearly 600,000. Anita Amstutz, the church’s pastor, says this tradition of healing reflects a communal practice that existed in the early centuries of Christianity.

“I definitely believe that the church in the past had healing ministries, of praying with people, the laying on of hands within the community,” says Amstutz, adding that after the 5th Century this power was placed in the priestly role.

She wanted to recognize a “real passion for healing” she observed when members of AMC began to pray over and do hands-on healing work for the leader of the church’s volunteer Service Adventure unit. The young man faced intensive recovery after a serious traffic accident, and these healing gatherings helped plant a seed for Amstutz who at the time was helping to lead the congregation through a rethinking of its ministries.

Buoyed by these individuals’ “gifts of discernment, anointing, mediation and healing prayer,” she wondered “what if we could collect these people together” to help the church community with physical, mental and spiritual needs in a highly confidential manner. In her experience, churches initiate prayer chains or telephone trees when a major illness occurs, but she envisioned a broader “healing ministry” as an important part of the church’s outreach. “Spiritual resources (at AMC) are huge,” Amstutz says.

The end result came in 2005 when the church formed the Healing Ministries Team, a volunteer group of four church members with backgrounds in social work, pastoral care, hospital chaplain work and healthcare who are guided by Amstutz to help attend to the needs of the congregation. The team also includes “adjunct members” who have backgrounds in psychiatry, hospice work and nursing.

Member Geneva Swartzentruber finds herself impressed with the level of commitment the team brings to its mission. “We have a great team of people who are invested in making this happen,” says Swartzentruber, who has attended AMC for 14 years.

Team members serve to alleviate the pastoral burden in the church where 90 to 100 people attend each Sunday. When Amstutz is taking time off or attending conferences, team members are just a phone call or visit away to assist the congregation.

AMC member Jaime Campbell has grappled with schizophrenia for much of her adult life. During a recent hospitalization she received visits from Amstutz and phone calls from team member Beth Gingrich to see how she was doing. Campbell appreciates the spiritually comprehensive nature of the team’s outreach, noting the “Healing Ministries is about helping a person become whole with God.”

The team also responds to requests for financial aid from the church’s sharing fund that mostly supports members of the church community who are in need. Discernment about the need involves two to three team members who consult with each other about determining the amount given.

One of the primary tasks undertaken by the committee has been a commitment to pray for the joys and concerns shared during the weekly church service. Every Sunday a team member jots down these prayers, later circulating them by e-mail so that all members can pray over the requests during the week. Healing Ministries Team members also have occasionally participated in Sunday services by leading the congregation during the designated time of the “Prayers of the People.”

Another vehicle for encouraging healing prayer has come from the hands of one church attendee. After discussing the various ways that the AMC community could submit prayers to the pastor and the Healing Ministries Team, the idea of a prayer vessel was born. Lynn Eby, a potter who had made cups and plates for the church kitchen, created a ceramic bowl where community members can place their written requests. The goal is to incorporate the vessel into a particular Sunday service held every three months.

Healing nights at the church have also formed a concrete way for the team to provide people with a safe space for spiritual assistance. Before the monthly service begins, team members gather to pray together. The church’s sanctuary is prepared – candles are lighted, recorded music begins playing – and then members of the Healing Ministries Team meet and pray one on one or in groups with the participants who request it. Space is also made in the sanctuary for quiet reflection.

Special services also give the team more opportunities to devote to spiritual healing. Members of the Healing Ministries Team led a Sunday Lamentations service held on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, and the rituals included anointing with oil and ashes. Last year the team organized an evening service around the time of All Souls’ Day where people gathered midweek to share prayers and remembrances of friends and family members who had died. The ministries’ members coordinated a weekend of silence and contemplative prayer during Lent which was held at a Norbertine center in the city and have plans for a similar retreat during the Advent season.

Swartzentruber has gotten many positive reactions about the team’s activities. “I have had a number of people who have liked the prayer vessel and found healing nights to be beneficial … I’m surprised with how many people are comfortable with anointing. It looks like this is something people are finding helpful.”

Pastor Amstutz believes that eventually the work of the Healing Ministries Team will not only heal individual lives and broken relationships within the congregation but will serve to repair ties with the area’s Jewish and Native American communities. It is a movement, she says, that will go “beyond the church walls.


Living with mental illness

Jaime Campbell

By Neal Anderson

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (Mennonite Church USA)Schizophrenia has been a life-altering but not life-ending condition for Jaime Campbell, 32, of Albuquerque, N.M.

“My illness doesn’t define me, and I am not my illness,” says the 32-year-old member of Albuquerque Mennonite Church (AMC), who has dealt with mental illness since she was a teenager.

It is a journey that has taken Campbell on a path of struggle and self-acceptance but it hasn’t stopped her from achieving and contributing to the world around her. Campbell is currently pursuing a bachelor’s of science degree in sign language interpretation with a minor in mathematics at the University of New Mexico. At church she has helped organize social events, signed at worship services, baked for a rummage sale and helped teach a Sunday school class for preschool-aged children. She also has helped take care of family members in times of crisis

As is the case with many illnesses, symptoms surface but a diagnosis can take some time to determine. At 16, Campbell experienced a hallucination – God descended in the form of “a beam of light” and told her she would go to South Africa at 19 and be martyred there by a firing squad at the age of 21.

The summer before her freshman year in college, she first began making unusual facial expressions and also would curl up in a ball and cry. Most of her friends and family attributed it to the stress of the upcoming transition to college. But Campbell began to have hallucinations of visual entities that followed her, including a threatening shadowy figure who stayed steps behind her and an old man who lived in the backseat of her car. Hearing voices that urged her to hurt herself and others became another manifestation of her condition.

Campbell sought help at a university counseling service and subsequently went to the university’s hospital during an episode of extreme disorientation. A psychiatrist there attributed it to the emotional shortcomings of how she was parented instead of a biochemical condition. She was finally diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder about six months later and began taking medication as well as receiving therapy. The following months found her struggling with her illness and its isolating effects. Campbell, always a high achieving student who started teaching herself sign language at the age of 9, had to drop out of school and begin navigating a new life.

Her classmates and friends had a difficult time accepting her new condition. But for the most part the AMC community was available to Campbell and her family. “From my experience, I still very much felt the presence of the church,” she says of those early days of her illness. “I could be sick there. The church let that be OK.”

After she was diagnosed, Campbell’s mother quit her job to take care of her and the family’s devoted care kept her from many potential hospitalizations. To assist the family, congregation members would have Campbell over for visits or stop by to spend time with her. Her younger sister would also spend some time with members of the church community to step away from the stresses of home life.

It was also through her local Mennonite church that Campbell first heard about Gould Farm in Massachusetts, a residential community for people with mental illness that was founded on Christian principles – “it’s a community first and a treatment place next,” Campbell says. She lived there for two years, taking part in the farm’s active work and community life, and she describes it to a necessary transition to adulthood. “I needed to go to Gould Farm like a lot of kids go to college out of state,” she says. The experience proved so fulfilling that when Campbell was more stable she returned to the Boston area to help run small group homes for people with disabilities.

Being secretive about her condition has not been part of Campbell’s reality. She has spoken to high school students about mental illness, worked on a task force on mental health care and shared her own story as part of a Sunday worship service. In 2002, Campbell, her parents, sister and grandmother were featured in “Nothing to Hide, Mental Illness in the Family,” a book of photographs and first-person recollections.

As treatment has improved her condition, Campbell says it has been frustrating to balance all her medications. “I’m not willing to be tired all the time,” she says about their side effects, and she communicates with her psychiatrist to try to curb her medications’ downsides, including sleepiness and weight gain. Navigating the healthcare system has had its share of challenges. “When I was on Medicaid it was great, now that I’m on Medicare, it’s not,” she says, noting that Medicare pays 50 percent of her approved psychiatric visits. She also pays for weekly counseling visits at a Christian counseling service where she pays on a sliding scale due to Medicare limits.

Campbell continues to receive strong support from her circle of friends, family and her church during recent hospitalizations. Participation in AMC’s small groups has let her share how she is doing, and Campbell has appreciated the times when she has been prayed over. Assistance from AMC also comes from just down the street. Campbell lives in a neighborhood that many in the church have nicknamed the “Mennohood” because of the concentration of church members. When Campbell is feeling paranoid or out of sorts, she says she can readily contact a Mennohood neighbor for reassurance or help. Campbell also has four-legged help from a Doberman pinscher named Will who she has been training as a psychiatric assistance animal.

Support also comes from members in the congregation who have had their own struggles with mental health. Marjorie Musick, a retired social worker who has bipolar disorder, has known Campbell for more than 10 years and the two often have turned to each other for help.

Musick credits Campbell’s strong family circle and her determination to succeed as key factors in dealing with her condition. “She’s pretty amazing,” Musick says, adding that Campbell is good at assessing when she is going into a psychotic state and then getting the necessary help. “The alternative is for her to stay in a sick space and she refuses to do that … Jaime does amazing things and it brings out the best in the people around her.”

Although many Mennonite Church USA congregations have dealt with the changes that mental illness can bring to those it affects and their families, Campbell offers some advice:

A congregation should be supportive but not to the point of where a person isn’t expected to care of himself or herself. “In an effort to be accepting, we end up kind of getting rid of personal responsibility. But it’s my job to take care of my mental health.”
Encourage people in the community to ask, “What can I do?”
Make a First Fruits offering to a local counseling center that helps low-income clients or donate to an organization like Gould Farm.
Speak up when people around you make ignorant comments about mental illness.
Pray for the person but don’t focus on the casting out of demons, as a literal biblical interpretation can be stigmatizing and potentially harmful.

“A lot of my hallucinations are religious in nature -- demons, Satan, martyrs … Nobody has had to cast out demons but (it has helped that they) have prayed for my mental health.” Campbell says, “It’s more exciting to cast out demons … but it’s much more about (helping) people and relationships, rather than getting rid of something.”

Campbell notes that a commitment to mental health care is imperative for Mennonite churches that work for social justice. “If we live our lives as peacemakers then we have to be making space for people with mental illness.”


Resource advocates support congregational ministries

Rachel Gerber

By Kathy Weaver Wenger

NEWTON, Kan. (Mennonite Church USA)Mennonite Church USA congregations and their leaders are often faced with multiple resource options from churchwide agencies and other Mennonite organizations. Conference Resource Advocates exist to help pastors and lay leaders, in a personal way, find and utilize the resources that will best suit their needs.

Resource advocate for Mountain States Mennonite Conference Rachel Gerber from Denver, Colorado, values the relational aspect of her work.

“We’re in it together,” is what Gerber wants to communicate. She, like resource advocates in other Mennonite Church USA conferences, is available to inform, encourage and connect congregations within her conference.

For Rachel, this role as an advocate “blended two of my passions in life: education and the church. I see the importance of needing good resources to support and undergird teachers and ministers as they build up the body of Christ.”

Rachel and other resource advocates are responsible for staying up-to-date on Mennonite Church USA resources. Pastors and lay leaders are very busy. They need things that are accessible and easy to understand. Understanding the local context enables the Conference Resource Advocates to highlight specific resources and then, when called upon, assist congregational leaders in the use of these materials for their particular setting and ministries.

Often congregations work alone, trying to do outreach, faith formation and leadership training by themselves. Resource advocates exist to help them along on their journey so congregations don’t have to constantly reinvent the wheel.

“Part of my role, as I see it, is to help connect congregations to one another as we are all seeking the same end – to encourage and provide spaces where genuine growth in faith can occur,” Gerber says.

For each conference to have an advocate who leaders can go to personally with questions and ideas about Mennonite resources centralizes the ministry preparation process for congregations.

Gerber says she particularly enjoyed the gathering of congregations in New Mexico when she was doing training for the new Gather ’Round curriculum. The gathering included congregations who typically do not have many opportunities to meet jointly and share about how they do Sunday school as well as brainstorm about ways to do things in the future. Participants expressed appreciation for the chance to come together and get training. Now that Gather ’Round has had its initial kick-off, resource advocates are looking for other occasions to bring congregations together to discuss their faith formation ministries.

Being an advocate for resources from Mennonite Church USA agencies is appealing to Gerber. She believes, “All resources have a specific slant or theological leaning. What are they not specifically saying but is still there between the lines? What is being expressed (or missed) about peace, simple living, baptism? If we are not careful, we could be teaching our children and adults things that as Mennonites or Anabaptists we do not necessarily hold as central.” Rachel often recommends MennoLens, a congregational tool to evaluate curriculum, available from Mennonite Publishing or online at www.mph.org.

Conference Resource Advocates like Gerber want to be supportive to congregations in each of their conferences. They are available to assist leaders as they sift through the vast array of resources available and are ready to listen to how Mennonite Church USA agencies can do their best to strengthen congregational ministries.