When a minister leaves a congregation, often a love offering is collected in their name. The practice varies from church to church: when I left my last congregation, I used the gifts to help defray moving expenses and toward the down payment on our house. When Andy left in the spring, we took up a collection for his future pilgrimages and toward Camp Highland’s partnership with local Indigenous kids and communities in Northern Wisconsin.
When Shelly Wilson retired in 2019, gifts given in her honor were gathered in a fund and set aside as those involved in Health Ministries discerned how best to put them to use. One dream expressed by members of the group at the time, and believed to be a need of the community, was the funding of a Parish Nurse Program.
Over the last number of years, however, and particularly through these COVID years, we have seen the health-related needs of our congregation shifting. We have discovered that many of our folks have good access to regular medical care, as well as advocates to help them navigate various health systems. One rising need, however, has centered around social and emotional health.
As a UCC congregation, one resource in meeting that need – for welcome and education and support – is the Our Whole Lives program. Our Whole Lives (or OWL) is the lifespan sexuality program designed by the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association. OWL offers courses for a number of life stages: kindergarten and first graders; fourth through sixth graders; seventh through ninth graders; tenth through twelfth graders; young adults, adults, and older adults. Each one is developmentally appropriate, accurate, and deeply empowering. Folks who go through OWL leave not only with a deeper understanding of human bodies, but with skills to navigate and negotiate healthy relationships, cultural influences, and questions of social justice.
Each Our Whole Lives group is led by a facilitator, trained to teach this curriculum for a particular age group, and to facilitate healthy discussion around these complex and deeply personal issues. A good portion (but not all) of the monies in the Shelly Wilson fund will be used to host a facilitator training here at UCG, which will not only allow us to train many facilitators for a lower cost, but also to recoup some expenses by collecting tuition from participants from surrounding churches and organizations. Shelly has herself offered her enthusiastic blessing to this use.
Our Whole Lives is already alive and well at UCG: last year we had nearly 30 middle schoolers complete a 10-month program together; and this fall, Talia and I are offering a class to 4th-6th graders. We are welcoming a number of UCG participants, and several new families from outside UCG as well.
We continue to discern the health-related needs of others at UCG as well, and the ways those needs intersect with age, gender, economic resources, and sexuality. We are in a time of big dreaming, and of exploring and imagining how we can serve our congregation’s members and our wider community. Using a portion of these funds to expand OWL is just a first step in this continuing journey.
I hope you are as excited about this new possibility for health ministry in our community as I am. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me, via phone or email.
– Rev. Bromleigh McCleneghan