Explanation

Over the past decades, the work of the Episcopal Church in ministry and advocacy regarding matters of human health and wellness has been steady but uneven, moving in tides of interest from triennium to triennium. Resolutions have been affirmed and Task Forces have been formed to conduct research, do work, and promote policies and programs for the Episcopal Church in regard to specific issues related to human health and wellness. Across the last 50 years, there have been fluctuating seasons of focus on aging, neurodivergent individuals and their families, substance use and addiction, suicide risk and prevention, reproductive health, maternal and infant health, palliative healthcare, childhood and adult disability, grief and bereavement, mental health, stress, and trauma. Much has been accomplished over the decades in affirming varied aspects of health and in seeking to address challenges to health and wellbeing. In each area of interest and effort, it has been challenging to sustain interest and maintain continued effort for the Episcopal Church. Different interim bodies have gone about good work and launched fresh proposals and program initiatives, but with rare interaction with each other about common or overlapping goals and plans. Additionally, Task Forces are short-term interim bodies; work that is partially or fully completed during one Task Force’s life cycle may not be picked up or continued due to shifting interests of new triennial cycles, and some work may end up repeated and reduplicated years later due to loss of continuity. Furthermore, there are areas of physical health that are largely untouched.

Two cases in point:

1) There have been fluctuating seasons of increasing and waning focus on mental health, with resolutions in 1991 and 2000 encouraging increased awareness of mental illness and support for those facing mental health challenges, and with a period of effort in creating an Episcopal Mental Illness Network (EMIN) as a web-based connective community. This network lost steam when it lost funding to support its continuing efforts, and its last website postings were in 2015. In the meantime, another resolution focused regarding families with children with neurodivergent challenges (ranging from attention deficit to autism) was brought forward and affirmed in 2012, but without clear interface with EMIN. A new Task Force on mental health was created in 2018 and renewed in 2022. At the same time in 2022, a wide array of other resolutions related to mental health (including substance use addiction and recovery, suicide risk and prevention, and trauma) resulted in the formation or continuation of other Task Forces, or referral of work to a Church Center staff office.

2) There was previously a Standing Commission on Health. This commission was last mentioned in 2009 and discontinued in the 2012 General Convention’s move to eliminate most Standing Commissions. Since that time, some Standing Commissions have been reinstated or freshly launched. This movement toward a return of Standing Commissions has come as a result of recognizing the difficulty of developing continuity and sustained investment in churchwide initiatives when relying solely on task forces or on single Church Center officers.

These examples illustrate the weakness of largely resolution-driven approaches to developing steady and sturdy ministries that support human health and wellness. In order to build continuity and collaboration into such development for the sake of the whole Church in all its orders of ministry, a more enduring body is needed, in the form of a canonically confirmed Standing Commission.

The scope of this new commission will be to address matters of ministry in the forms of welcome, inclusion, support, encouragement, empowerment, and advocacy for people facing challenges in physical, mental, emotional, relational, or spiritual health; and to support churchwide efforts to strengthen health and wellbeing. Issues to address in the scope of human health and wellness will include a fuller array of mental health challenges and cognitive challenges including neurodivergence and developmental disabilities, personality disorders, substance use addiction, and the impacts of trauma, disaster, abuse, and moral injury. The scope will address physical health challenges including disease, enduring injury, disability or physical limitation, and cardiovascular, pulmonary, and gastrointestinal health. The realities of age-related changes over the course of human life and the unique challenges that can emerge at different points in life will help guide this commission toward best practices. Key focal points in all of the commission’s work will be the importance of affirming the dignity of all persons, the recognition of identity-related struggles that emerge with each health challenge faced, the need to combat cultural patterns of stigma and pigeon-holing, and the gifts of God in food, sleep and rest, and physical activity to sustain and strengthen human lives.

With such an enduring charge, this commission can work steadily on multiple fronts of ministry supporting human health and wellness, collaborating in development and sharing of resources across church bodies. Subcommittees working on specific issues will interact with one another and help refine each other’s focal work in ways that lead to a more cohesive, holistic approach. With an enduring commission, it will be possible to encourage sustained learning and development of the Episcopal Church’s capacity for ministry with people facing all sorts of health-related challenges. Training and resources can be developed and supported to strengthen capacities of lay members, deacons, priests, and bishops in nurturing wellness and being helpful companions in illness. An enduring commission will establish enduring collaborative relationships and partnerships with other effective organizations, agencies, and networks engaged in the work of human health and wellness. To build the strongest possible ministry capacities in the church for health, such partnerships will need to be with religious and secular organizations that represent the varied cultures within and between the nations served by the Episcopal Church.

Funding requested will support meetings for this new Standing Commission. Additional funding through other resolutions will support further training and deployment of Mental Health First Aid instructors that will include training for those working with youth, and creation of modules for the curriculum for clergy and lay leaders in mental health ministry and translation of the curriculum for Spanish-speaking communities.