Facilitating a health focus to pastoral care
Faith Community Care (FCC) is health focused pastoral care ministry using gifted and specifically trained volunteers and people with health professional knowledge and skills to effectively care for people in the church’s congregation and reach out to the community the church serves.
Are your church’s pastoral care needs growing?
It could be due to rising stress, mental health issues, pandemic, relationship break-down, isolation and loneliness, early discharge from hospital, increasing chronic conditions, disabilities, or the growing needs of our ageing population.
Faith Community Care may be your answer!
Click here to read more ‘What can Faith Community Care bring to your church?’
Importance of community
Life lived in loving community is good for our whole heath as individuals and communities, yet one in three Australians are experiencing loneliness and young people aged 18–24 years are the most lonely. Our health deteriorates when we are isolated. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported a global increase of 25% in anxiety and depression resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia is witnessing a massive increase in addiction, with one in six Australians having a drug addiction and one in ten an alcohol addiction. There is an epidemic of relationship breakdown and social disconnection adversely impacting our nation’s health. People are crying out for meaningful connection in caring communities. Government cannot simulate community! Doctors cannot prescribe social connection! BUT churches can be healthy communities where people experience welcome, encouragement, and opportunities to fully participate, so they experience the joy of belonging.
Why would a Christian be involved in Faith Community Care?
It’s a commandment to “love one another as Christ loved us” (John 13:34)!
As followers of Jesus Christ we want to reflect his love and character to the world. Jesus’ ministry focused on freeing the oppressed, reconciling the broken, enriching the poor, releasing the captive, welcoming the isolated, sheltering the homeless, providing for the vulnerable with acts of love, justice and proclamation of good news (Luke 4:18; Matt. 25:31ff). Christians are instructed to go and do the same. It is not a charitable choice, but a commandment to “love one another as Christ loved us” (John 13:34). Read more here
To go deeper click here for a fact sheet with the scripture and theology that underpins Faith Community Care
Join us and be equipped
People need equipping to provide effective and compassionate Faith Community Care
Australian Faith Community Nurses Association (AFCNA) is an incorporated professional association and a registered charity with a vision to equip people in today’s Christian churches to provide quality, effective and compassionate health focused pastoral care. AFCNA provides excellent faith-based education, information and resources to facilitate everyone to provide effective Faith Community Care.
Our focus is HEALTH
- Health promotion
- Empowerment
- Advocacy and referral
- Listening and visiting
- Transformative relationships
- Hope and spiritual care
Click here for a flyer to read more
If your heartbeat is to facilitate Christian churches to be effective communities of care and healing that God intended them to be, PLEASE JOIN US!
In keeping with our understanding that God has given his church all the gifts they need to undertake his commission, we invite you to consider ways you can partner with us to fulfil God’s mission.
Read more about partnering with us here.
You can join as a member for $50/ year or $30 (concession). Your entire gift is used to undertake our vision ‘Churches that provide effective, compassionate health focused pastoral care’