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Health in community
The "new synthesis" must include more than the patient, doctor, and even the clergy, however. The story that develops in the next decade may very well be the importance of community in the role of prayer. What Koenig has found from research, the Reverend James Krings, a chaplain at Saint Mary's Health Center in Saint Louis, Missouri, has found from personal observation: Individual faith is helpful, but a community of faith is even better.

Krings counseled a young woman named Toni who was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her physician wanted to schedule an immediate mastectomy, but Toni wanted to visit Krings first. Krings suggested that Toni receive the Eucharist at her church on Sunday, plus a laying-on of hands.

Toni drew desperately needed strength from the church community's response as her illness was made public. Later, she told the church, "Just as Aaron and Joshua [sic] held up the arms of a weary Moses, so you've held me up." As tears filled her eyes, she added, "I sat on the rock of Saint Cronan's as I traveled through my sickness."

What followed was a transformation—not just in Toni's life, but in the life of the church. The transformation is seen in the fact that, since Toni's experience, it has become normal for people at Saint Cronan's who are facing hospitalization or major medical tests to request anointing and prayer.

"Church members are much more public about their illness," Krings notes, "and Toni's experience seemed to give everybody permission to be ministers to each other rather than wait for the 'professional clergy' to meet their needs. Our people always had the ministerial instincts, but Toni's going public set them all free to use them.

"The parish has never been the same," Krings adds. "It's the single healthiest parish I've ever seen, because the whole array of human experience is welcome, including sickness and funerals."

Toni showed dramatic improvement and enjoyed periods of remission. After a number of months, the cancer came back, was defeated once again, and then returned for yet a third and final time, eventually taking Toni's life. Even so, Toni gained several additional years of life, and the parish gained a radically different orientation toward fellowship, support, and love.

A community may be even more important when prayer does not result in healing. Matthews reminds us, "Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane, that God would take the cup of suffering from him, was answered with a no." Patients and family particularly need the support of a believing community when it looks like nothing but death will take the illness away.

This lack of certainty may explain many church leaders' ambivalence about openly and publicly engaging in healing prayer, but that is precisely why the church needs to interact with the current interest in spirituality and medical practice. Theological perception is essential to understanding the practice and purpose of prayer.

"Church communities should be less afraid of illness," Krings asserts, "including cancer and heart disease. It should be a normal part of church life for people to be prayed over. Don't make it a spectacular event, just a normal part of an average Sunday as we celebrate … the body of Christ. The power of prayer is in the community."

The church's two extremes
While medicine is becoming more open to the possibility that prayer heals, the community of faith, ironically enough, has not always been so open. Today, two radically different faith perspectives challenge Christian physicians, according to Komp, the author of Images of Grace. Both extremes make treatment more difficult.

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January 6 1997, Vol. 41, No. 1