Introduction to Spiritual Distress: Research and Implications for Spiritual Care

Webinars for Free Church and other UK chaplains

November 21 & 29, 9:00 – 10:15 am Central Standard Time/ 3:00-4:15 PM GMT

Session 1: Basic Concepts, Examples, Prevalence, 21st November 2023
Session 2: Harmful Effects, Tools for Screening, Future Research, 29th November 2023

Description: Religious or spiritual (R/S) distress includes tensions and struggles about finding meaning in illness or injury and/or tensions and struggles with what one holds to be sacred. In these webinars we will review the research about R/S distress and discuss its implications for spiritual care providers. We will also look at methods that have been developed to identify patients or family caregivers who may be experiencing R/S distress and possibly benefit from referral to a spiritual care provider.

In Session 1 we will review basic concepts and definitions about R/S distress, and we will look at several vignettes of patients with R/S distress. Then we will examine some of the research about the prevalence of R/S distress and consider its implications for spiritual care providers.

In Session 2 we will examine some of the research about the harmful effects associated with R/S distress. Then we will review some tools that have been developed to screen for R/S distress and discuss how they can be incorporated in clinical settings to improve the provision of spiritual care. We will also discuss areas for future research about R/S distress.

Presenter: George Fitchett, D.Min., Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Religion, Health, and Human Values, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago Illinois. With training in both healthcare chaplaincy and epidemiology, he is one of the U.S.’s leading chaplain-researchers. In 1999 he and his colleagues reported the harmful effects of R/S distress in a sample of medical rehabilitation patients. The topic has remained a focus of his research. He is the former Director of Transforming Chaplaincy, whose mission is to promote evidence-based spiritual care (www.transformchaplaincy.org). In 2019 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University for Humanistic Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Transforming Chaplaincy: The George Fitchett Reader, a collection of his research, was published in the Fall, 2021.

These webinars are free to attend thanks to support from the College of Healthcare Chaplains and the Free Churches Group

Please book your place HERE.

Big Give Christmas Challenge, The Welcome Directory

The Welcome Directory is taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge and is looking for supporters of this incredible work to pledge a minimum of £100 for which Match Funding will be sought. Emily Green, Welcome Directory Project Manager recently released the following information about pledges. Please do consider how you might be able to support this charity, started by the Free Churches Group in 2014.

We are excited to announce that The Welcome Directory has applied to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge - the UK’s biggest match-funded campaign!

We are raising funds for our project ‘Christmas Connections’ to combat the loneliness and social isolation that people so often experience when stepping beyond the prison gates.

To take part in this challenge, we are looking for key individuals to support us by making 'Pledges’, which will be used as match funds to double online donations made to our charity during the Christmas campaign period. We cannot take part in this challenge without you.

We are aiming to raise a total of £1,500 in pledges to take part in the campaign. Could you pledge a minimum of £100 to help us reach this target? Your commitment to funding will also help us to secure additional match funds via a Champion (sourced by the Big Give).

You can make a pledge by simply completing the online form by the 30th of August.

What is The Welcome Directory?

The Welcome Directory is a non-profit, multi-faith organisation, dedicated to supporting the resettlement and social inclusion of prison leavers by building a network of welcoming and supporting faith communities beyond the gates.

Our work helps to combat loneliness and social isolation amongst prisoners in the post-release landscape, supporting positive mental health through faith-based social inclusion for reducing rates of re-offending.

The release period for prison leavers is an extremely challenging time, with an estimated 44% of adults reconvicted less than one year after leaving prison, which can prove devastating to an individual’s mental health. Connecting a prison leaver to a faith community can make all the difference – especially at Christmas. Our YouTube video 'Beyond the Prison Gates' captures, through the voice of prison leavers, the long-term impact that TWD can make to an individual’s release journey.

Whilst a small charity, we are highly regarded within the criminal justice sector, working in collaboration with HM Prison and Probation Service.

 The Welcome Directory has been acknowledged in both the House of Lords and the Church of England’s General Synod and has increased engagement by 187% since the end of 2020.

What is the Big Give: Christmas Challenge?

For seven days, the challenge offers supporters the opportunity to double their donations. This makes an extraordinary difference to the lives of prison leavers. One donation, twice the impact!

When our online supporters donate during the campaign period at Christmas, their donation is matched by your generous pledge. So, £50 from a member of the public is immediately doubled and becomes £100 directly to support the resettlement of prison leavers. Watch their video here.

• The fulfilment of your pledge is conditional on us receiving the appropriate online donations during the campaign. You will only be required to pay a pro-rata amount of your pledge if we don’t hit our online target - it's our guarantee to you that we are committed to raising additional donations.

• Please note that if you pledge to The Welcome Directory, you will not be able to make an online donation to us during the campaign period in December because your pledge will be used to match these donations.

We are incredibly grateful for your consideration. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with any questions about our Christmas Connections campaign.

Does government do God?

Reflection from Yvonne Campbell, Director of the Free Churches Group

Being part of the Free Churches Group is such a privilege and an opportunity.

Earlier this year Colin Bloom published a report titled “Does government do God? As part of the Government’s response, the Free Churches were asked to provide feedback on the report in a round table meeting with Baroness Scott, the Minister of Faith. Drawing on briefings from the Free Church Secretaries and Paul our General Secretary, I was pleased to participate in the first meeting with the Minister and a small group of church leaders.

The report is very detailed and really interesting especially for anyone praying for the future of the Church. I highly recommend you read at least the summary and the recommendations. Here is the link to access the report.

The Church has an amazing opportunity to be the hope in our communities at a challenging time and this report, which was welcomed by those at the meeting with Baroness Scott, could help to play a part in that. The Free Churches Group was invited to play its part in making the recommendations of the report a reality. We definitely have an important voice that needs to be heard and excellent work to share that local churches are doing in communities across the country.

The report claims that “Faith is an ‘overriding force for good’ and government needs to improve its engagement with these groups.”

The main areas of conversation in the meeting focused on the following:

Faith Literacy

How to help Government and those with no faith or belief understand our Christian beliefs and way churches serve and connect people in communities. The Government also needs to be more transparent about how churches and faith organisations can connect with local and national government. Discussion took place about making faith literacy creative, using stories and involving young people.

Safeguarding

A Faith Compact/Charter is going to be written to help government departments to more effectively join up around the recommendations relating to safeguarding out-of-school settings. 

Religious Education

There was a discussion about RE in schools and statistics were shared on the need for improvement, in relation to Ofsted figures on non-compliance with Government requirements. The Minister showed a great deal of interest in this issue. We are hopeful that specific action will be taken to address the areas of concern raised.

Chaplaincy

I highlighted that there was much more scope needed in the report on chaplaincy and we as the Free Churches have a concentration of expertise in chaplaincy ministry, primarily in healthcare, prisons, education and the Armed Forces. There was interest in the Free Churches ‘Chaplaincy Hub’, which we are continuing to develop. Only prison chaplaincy was mentioned in the report in any depth. I was able to confirm that we agree with the importance of speedily reforming the means by which Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service source and resource the faith and belief advisors. There was a useful discussion about healthcare chaplaincy and the suggestion that NHS practitioners don’t always know how to treat patients of faith.

Faith Champion

The Faith Champion was discussed although there was no consensus on what the next steps should be.

Baroness Scott will of course be meeting other faith groups as the Government continues to take forward its response to this report. The Free Churches Group will continue to engage on this report and take advantage of any opportunities to help the Government take forward the recommendations.

At the end of the meeting, I had the privilege of praying for the Minister and the work she has to do.

Do share any thoughts or ways your church is responding to what the report highlights.

Yvonne Campbell

Director, Free Churches Group

General Secretary, Congregational Federation

Hello I'm Andy Kerr

Hello, I’m Andy Kerr, Managing Chaplain at HMP Ford Open Prison in Sussex.

Open Prison, I hear you say, what is that? Well, it’s a prison where instead of taking away someone’s liberty we start to give liberty back to them. It’s a very different prison from Cat A, B or C prisons, which appear mostly on our TV screens through dramas or documentaries. For example, a third of the people detained at Ford are working in ordinary jobs in the community, engaging with you or me every day: forklift truck drivers, office workers, gas fitters, crane operators and retail workers. We also release people home for 2 days a month and 4 nights once a month to rebuild family relationships, start parenting again and resettle. Onsite education and a college provide maths and English, with business studies, painting and decorating, engineering, drywall lining, and bricklaying courses amongst other opportunities.

How did I get to work in Prison?

I started out in life as a baker/confectioner, went into retail, delivered cars all over the UK, worked with children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, spent years working on a housing estate in the Midlands that BBC had unhelpfully entitled ‘Estate from Hell’ in their documentary, was called into Baptist Ministry and led a couple of churches. It was whilst leading a church in the South that I found many of the people I met on the streets swigging lager or smoking cannabis seemed to have offences in their backstory. Some had spent a long time in prison and some were in and out more regularly.

I was struck early on in my ministry by Jesus’ manifesto in Luke 4.

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

    because he has anointed me

    to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

    and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

If we the church are Christ’s body, then the ‘me’ in his manifesto becomes ‘us’! It really is that simple. So I left my church and started working at HMP Ford before going full time at HMP Lewes, and then finally coming back to HMP Ford in 2021.

Can I encourage you as churches to embrace His manifesto as well? I have found no greater delight, than to see the Holy Spirit of God working in prisoners’ lives, and the opportunity to join in with Him is a profound joy and a humbling experience.

Lastly a thought: the other day I met a young man in London who had been at HMP Ford. He said to me ‘how are you my brother?’!

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me...” [Matthew 25:35]

Reflection from Revd Helen Cameron, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

As I write this newsletter a story is in the headlines, not for long I fear, of a fatality in the Mediterranean near the island of Lampedusa when a boat of 45 refugees sank. The boat contained women, men and children and only 4 people survived. Such stories are now commonplace and there is a real and present danger that we will soon stop seeing or stop hearing such stories. In contrast, the story of the loss of the submersible near the wreck of the Titanic, equally sad, filled the headlines for a very long time and with a greater intensity. It was not treated as a commonplace story in any way.

 The death of any human being,, whether accidental, foreseen or expected is of significance and is noteworthy to those who loved them, who saw them as family, friends, or community, and peers. As Christian people we are comforted by the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew’s Gospel 10: 29-31 which promise that God attends to the smallest and the least, and notices us,

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father. Even the hairs of your head are all counted”.

Equally comforting but very challenging are the words in the Letter to the Romans chapter 2:11,

“God shows no partiality” or ‘God has no favourites”.

We struggle, I think, as a nation or group of nations to show that same impartiality. Some refugees (such as those from Ukraine) have been welcomed with generosity and been able to access well established systems of support - and that is magnificent-but others have not. Our partiality towards those we treat with hostility and those who receive hospitality is clear for all to see. Some refugees are granted safe passage and others are left to making dangerous sea crossings at the hands of smuggling gangs.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), around 90% of the world’s refugees come from countries in or close to war and conflict, and almost 90% of all refugees live in countries neighbouring their country of origin. Wars make refugees. In the long term, the only solution to the unprecedented numbers of refugees in the world is the cessation of war and conflict, and a world without war. This is the clear lesson from the current Russia–Ukraine conflict.

 In international law there is no “illegal” or “bogus” asylum seeker. Anyone has the right to apply for asylum in any country that has signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and to remain there until authorities have assessed their claim. Plans to relocate asylum seekers to another country are hostile; they penalise already humiliated people, and also contravene international law. The criterion for determining refugee status is fleeing danger and seeking safety, not the means of travel or routes taken, not ethnicity, not the colour of skin, not nationality.

All refugees have to be treated equally.

If we hold to the promise of the Kingdom of God that God’s love is for all and that God has no favourites, how do we accept a situation where people’s human rights, and human dignity, are deemed to disappear at a border? Jesus’ followers are familiar with his story about the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37), where a man despised for his faith offered compassion and care for a wounded man. The story illustrates how compassion is not restricted by borders and identity. Biblical witness carries a call for the protection and safety of people whose lives are in danger while their case is processed (Numbers 35). God called on Moses to set up cities of refuge to ensure this.

Emerging from this biblical wisdom is the root of the contemporary movement and network of City of Sanctuary, which has led to the development of the Church of Sanctuary work. See here.

The principle of sanctuary is built on protective safety, and it challenges hostility with hospitality and welcome in all human faith and practice. Hospitality is the established way of handling difference and transcending borders and barriers, and expressing respect for the worth of people, especially those considered to be least worthy and most excluded.

So how might we be involved in creating and developing cultures of welcome, hospitality and safety? Several members of the Free Churches Group are leading in work of this kind.

Church of Sanctuary is a faith-based initiative, a call to prophetic Christian witness. It is an expression of hospitality as a clear challenge to hostility. The aim is to take steps to build protective hospitality in ways that are mutually enriching. The hope is that churches will become places for all and proud to foster welcome, hospitality and safety to people fleeing violence and persecution. This would be a clear demonstration of Christian discipleship.

Sanctuary, or hospitality-with-safety, is a long-standing prophetic theme of Scripture. It is the most repeated ethical requirement in the Hebrew Scriptures. The foundational biblical principle is: love your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) and love the stranger as yourself (Leviticus 19:34). This attitude is echoed in Jesus’ teaching about how we treat the neighbour and the outsider (Matthew 25:35-40; Luke 10:29-37). In ancient times sanctuary in churches used to assist those claiming to be innocent of a crime. More recently it has operated to protect immigrants or refugees facing deportation by the state. Now Sanctuary Churches who wish to greet new arrivals fleeing from danger to their lives may make a real difference for vulnerable people.

The Hebrew prophets consistently demanded justice for “the widow, the orphan and the stranger”. Today these groups may include vulnerable older people, children in danger, and “asylum seekers” and refugees. May we be a justice seeking Church!

If you want to know more contact here.