Tag: sermon guide

God’s Temple: Health and Holiness in the Body of Christ

Posted on by Lindsey Fields

Our health is strongly influenced by a combination of biological, social, and environmental factors beyond our control: the conditions in our communities, the schools in our neighborhoods, the availability of healthy food and good jobs, and how close we are to hospitals and clinics.

As we continue to explore what it means to be healthy, the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund has created a sermon guide that will go beyond the physicality of what health “looks” like and deeper into holistic wellness that includes our emotional, physical, social, and spiritual health.

By exploring health from these four perspectives, the “God’s Temple: Health and Holiness in the Body of Christ” sermon guide opens a wider conversation about health and wellness that integrates with the church’s call to live as the Body of Christ in the world.

To help guide this conversation, the sermon guide utilizes select passages from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians.

Week 1 explores emotional health in relation to Paul’s teaching that the Christian community is the temple of God, highlighting belonging as crucial to our emotional well-being as humans.

Week 2 addresses physical health as an individual and communal endeavor as Christians are called to use our bodies to glorify God.

Week 3 explores social health using Paul’s discussion of whether the Corinthian Christians should eat meat sacrificed to idols. Paul’s teaching emphasizes that social health means loving God and loving neighbor by glorifying God while also actively seeking not to be a stumbling block to our neighbors.

Week 4 concludes the series by exploring spiritual health as the cultivation of love as the church cooperates in using our gifts to grow and act as the Body of Christ in the world.

Downloads
Sermon Guide and Toolkit
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Resources

Nationwide Resources

Kansas Resources

Resources in this sermon guide

Week 1

We’d love to hear from you! Did you use the sermon guide and/or toolkit? Would you be willing to share your feedback and experiences? Questions or suggestions? Please email us at hcnews@healthfund.org.

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Social Media

Below are social media tiles to help you promote the series. We would love to know if you use the guide—please tag us on Twitter or Facebook (@umhealthfund).

Facebook

Twitter

Let the Little Children: The Body of Christ and Childhood Health and Well-Being

Posted on by Lindsey Fields

The Health Fund believes that investing in early childhood development leads to the best health outcomes and the greatest return on investment. Research has shown that well-designed early childhood interventions can provide the support necessary to foster healthy brain growth and buffer children from the effects of adverse childhood experiences. We have learned that with adequate safe, stable, nurturing relationships during the first five years of life, children are more likely to succeed in school, become productive workers, and contribute to society.

The well-being of children in our churches and communities is an issue of great significance for the health and flourishing of children, families, and neighborhoods across the country and around the world. In an effort to connect the science of early childhood development and proven public health interventions with the life and mission of the church, this guide offers a three-week worship series that highlights three of Jesus’ interactions with children during his ministry.

Week 1 establishes the foundation for how and why Jesus welcomes and embraces children as part of God’s kingdom and invites the church to live into Jesus’ example by recognizing our Christian responsibility to nurture the well-being of children in our community.

Week 2 uses Jesus’ healing of the spirit-possessed boy in Luke’s Gospel as a model for how the church can tend to the physical health of children in our communities, paying particular attention to insurance coverage, wellness vaccines, and food security.

Week 3 then turns to Jesus’ Community Discourse in the Gospel of Matthew to explore Christ’s call to childlikeness as an invitation to promote children’s mental health by removing stumbling blocks and providing the relationships and skill-building necessary for children to build resilience in the face of adversity.

Downloads
Sermon guide and Toolkit
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We’d love to hear from you! Did you use the sermon guide and/or toolkit? Would you be willing to share your feedback and experiences? Questions or suggestions? Please email us at hcnews@healthfund.org.

Resources

Nationwide Resources

Kansas Resources

Resources in this sermon guide

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Social Media

Below are social media tiles to help you promote the series. We would love to know if you use the guide—please tag us on Twitter or Facebook (@umhealthfund).

Facebook

Twitter

Sermon Workshop: Connecting Faith and Health

Posted on by Lindsey Fields

The Health Fund hosted a free online sermon workshop: “Connecting Faith and Health: A Sermon-Planning Workshop for Preaching with Impact.”

The Health Fund is dedicated to improving the health and wholeness of Kansans. Over the past year, the Health Fund has worked in partnership with Lisa Hancock, PhD, to develop a series of sermon guides that bring together Scripture, theology, and health to help congregations connect their faith to health.

Each sermon guide contains multiple weeks; each week includes a call to worship, hymn selections, children’s sermon, call to action, and benediction, in addition to an exegesis and sermon notes section based on the week’s scripture passage.

Lisa Hancock led the workshop. Watch the workshop recording to learn more about each guide, and leave with up to 25 weeks of your liturgical sermon calendar planned.

Workshop Recording

Workshop slides
Workshop notes sheets
0:00:00 Welcome
0:25:14 Overview of the Liturgical Year
0:44:58 Journey Toward Mental Wellness (Advent or Ordinary Time)
1:09:59 Naming Trauma and Practicing Resilient Love (Lent)
1:35:41 Tending the Civic Soil (Ordinary Time)
1:59:03 God’s Temple: Health and Holiness in the Body of Christ (Ordinary Time)
2:20:13 Wrapped in God’s Embrace: Maternal Health, Flourishing, and Building Communities of Care (Ordinary Time)
2:43:16 Let the Little Children (Ordinary Time)
2:59:17 Questions and Feedback
3:13:57 Closing Prayer and Benediction

Wrapped in God’s Embrace: Maternal Health, Flourishing, and Building Communities of Care

Posted on by Lindsey Fields

The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund (Health Fund) is pleased to release a maternal health sermon guide. The Health Fund is committed to supporting the health and wholeness of all Kansans, including mothers. Maternal health intersects with two of our priority focus areas: Access to Care and Early Childhood Development.

Maternal and child health are early indicators of future public health challenges, which is why it is critical for mothers and children to have the healthiest start to life. Healthy mothers are important to building healthy families, but mothers often face mental and physical health issues that, without timely support and care, can impact not only their own well-being and quality of life but also present additional hurdles to the work of caring for children and loved ones. Infrastructure, supports, and communities of care for mothers are necessary for all Kansans to have the best start in life.

Research shows supporting a strong start to life for mothers and babies and investing early creates not only the best health outcomes, but also the greatest return on investment. At the Health Fund we are committed to ensuring mothers and our youngest Kansans enjoy nurturing family environments, so they are primed for healthy lives.

Beyond supporting program and policy investments, we want to create a loving and caring environment that supports maternal health, which is why we created this sermon guide.

This sermon guide, Wrapped in God’s Embrace: Maternal Health, Flourishing, and Building Communities of Care, acknowledges the vocation of motherhood and its impacts on family and community life. When considering maternal health, consider it as all issues related to the well-being of persons who give birth and/or take on the labor of motherhood in the lives of children. These issues include reproductive health, preventive care, mental health services, and emotional support services for mothers, as well as the points at which children’s health intersects with maternal health. This sermon guide will challenge readers to take a closer look at how mothers and their children are supported inside and outside of the church and the ways a child’s health is tied closely to their parent’s health and access to health care.

Through interpretative principles, this guide will address the often unseen struggles of motherhood, identify biblical text that will empower mothers, and will ultimately encourage readers to advocate and support for the health and legacy of motherhood and the well-being of the next generation.

Each week includes a call to worship, hymn selections, children’s sermon, call to action, and benediction, in addition to an exegesis and sermon notes section based on the week’s scripture passage. Week 1 introduces Mary’s birth story in the Gospel of Luke as a window into postpartum health and the supports women need in the first hours, days, and weeks of motherhood with a new child. Week 2 centers around the Canaanite Woman and the work of mothers as advocates for the well-being of the family, followed by Week 3 in which we witness how God guides Elijah, the Widow of Zarephath, and her son to form a community of care in the midst of hardship and crisis. The guide concludes in Week 4 with a return to Mary the Mother of the adult Jesus who, as a grown child, shows the fruit of secure attachment in early childhood.

Downloads
Sermon guide and Toolkit
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Nationwide Resources

Kansas Resources

United Methodist and Faith-Based Resources:

We’d love to hear from you! Did you use the sermon guide and/or toolkit? Would you be willing to share your feedback and experiences? Questions or suggestions? Please email us at hcnews@healthfund.org.

Resources in this sermon guide

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Social Media Tiles

Below are social media tiles to help you promote the series. We would love to know if you use the guide—please tag us on Twitter or Facebook (@umhealthfund).

Facebook

Twitter

Naming Trauma and Practicing Resilient Love

Posted on by Lindsey Fields

A Lenten Sermon Guide and Toolkit

At the Health Fund, we have partnered with non-profit organizations, universities, and state agencies to make healthcare more accessible for all Kansans. Yet, we know that the heartland holds a variety of lived experiences and histories that can leave negative imprints on their bodies that show up physically and emotionally in long-lasting ways. We call this trauma.

There has been a growing recognition of the lifelong effects of trauma, particularly from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) such as poverty, abuse, or neglect. Research demonstrates the best way to offset the impact of ACEs is through strong, stable, and nurturing relationships, especially with caring adults. A major focus area of our work at the Health Fund is early childhood development, including work to help families and communities build resilience in order to prevent and mitigate the impacts of trauma.

We know that untreated trauma negatively impacts the quality of life for the trauma survivor and those closest to them. Trauma may contribute to behaviors linked to poor health outcomes, like isolation from others, poor impulse control, anxiety, or increased use of substances to numb the pain or shame from intense feelings. Our vision for this sermon guide is to help individuals and communities recognize trauma and seek healing through resilient love.

Practicing resilient love helps individuals and communities return to the healthiest versions of themselves while simultaneously creating space to receive and give compassion, love, and respect to their neighbors who may have lived and experienced different realities from their own. Turning away from shame and drawing closer to Christ emboldens communities to call out the impact of trauma on their physical and emotional health.

In this sermon guide and toolkit, you will find a call to worship, hymns, children’s sermon, exegesis, sermon notes, and benediction to lead a seven-week Lenten series centered on the trauma experienced from economic hardship, relational wounds, environmental insecurity, and communal divisiveness. Included are resources on understanding trauma and connecting others to behavioral health services in Kansas and Nebraska.

Downloads:
Sermon Guide and Toolkit
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Easter Bulletin Insert

Resource Links:

We’d love to hear from you! Did you use the sermon guide and/or toolkit? Would you be willing to share your feedback and experiences? Would you consider recording a brief video to share? Questions or suggestions? Please send us an email at hcnews@healthfund.org.

Additional Resources:

Social Media Tiles

Below are social media tiles to help you promote the series. We would love to know if you use the guide—please tag us on Twitter or Facebook (@umhealthfund).

Facebook

Twitter

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