Faith Community Nursing

The Kettering Adventist Church began its Health Ministry Program in 1999 with the instillation of a Faith Community Nurse as part of the church staff. Our Health Ministry Program encompasses the Faith Community Nursing practice at Kettering Adventist Church.

Faith community nursing is a recognized specialty practice that combines professional nursing and health ministry. Faith community nursing emphasizes health and healing within a faith community. The philosophy of faith community nursing embraces four major concepts: spiritual formation; professionalism; shalom as health and wholeness; and community, incorporating culture and diversity.

• SPIRIT - The spiritual dimension is central to faith community nursing practice. Personal spiritual formation is an ongoing, essential component of practice for the faith community nurse and includes both self-care and hospitality, through opening the heart to self and others. Spiritual formation is an intentional process of intimacy with God to foster spiritual growth.
• ROOTS - The faith community nurse role reclaims the historic roots of professional nursing. Aspects of health and healing found in many faith traditions are embodied in the role of the faith community nurse. The faith community nurse practices under the scope and standards of practice and the ethical code of nursing as set forth in their country.
• SHALOM - The faith community nurse understands health to be a dynamic process that embodies the spiritual, psychological, physical, and social dimensions of the person. Shalom, God's intent for harmony and wholeness, serves as a foundation for understanding health. A sense of well being can exist in the presence of imbalance, and healing can exist in the absence of cure.
• COMMUNITY - The practice of faith community nursing focuses on a faith community. The faith community nurse, in collaboration with the pastoral staff and congregants, participates in the ongoing transformation of the faith community into sources of health and healing. Through partnership with other community health resources, faith community nursing fosters new and creative responses to health and wellness concerns. Faith community nurses appreciate that all persons are sacred and must be treated with respect and dignity. The faith community nurse serves the faith community, creates safe and sacred places for healing, and advocates with compassion, mercy, and dignity.