WE SPOKE ABOUT EBOLA
Ebola has broken out again in Africa. Until recently, I was often teaching at conferences for church leaders in many of these countries. Though not in the Congo.
The previous outbreak began in 2014. At a Kenyan conference that year, among sessions on the Bible, counselling, mentoring, leadership, we added a new topic. It was one about a disease that hits hardest on those who have the least knowledge of or protection from it. We spoke about Ebola.
The epidemic had not reached the area of the conference. In fact, London or Paris were closer to the centre of the 2014 outbreak than Kenya was. But we were all aware of the danger. Where health practices and infrastructure are poor, the risk of infection is much higher.
Churches as community centres
Some of our listeners that year thought health matters had no place in a church leadership conference. But Christian churches in Africa are critical for community preparation and response.
I once saw a map of neighbouring Rwanda showing the areas the 3 hospitals in the country served. The map revealed many places with poor access to services. An overlay was added showing the health clinics. These are the usual way people received medical help in remote districts. But there were still many areas not served by trained personnel. Then someone had inked in the local churches. Suddenly, the whole country was covered by centres of potential care and health information. Clearly, the churches could be important to effective preventative health coverage.
For Ebola, however, there is a second way churches and their leaders are critical to an effective response. This devastating epidemic spreads through contact with the secretions of infected people. That includes from the blood and vomit and diarrhoea of those who have just died.
Ill people are usually cared for by their family, and the family is also responsible for preparing the body for burial. Anyone caring for the sick and dying is at extreme risk. To protect everyone, informed leaders are needed to warn, even dissuade families from their usual practices.
Moreover, pastors and their spouses are often the first port of call for anyone in distress in the villages. If people are unexpectedly left without a roof over their head for the night, they expect a bed in the pastor’s house. And church people may be asked to help prepare the body for burial when everyone else has deserted the infected family. So church leaders are a potential source of reliable health information. But they are also open to severe danger as they and their people care for others.
Early Christians risked their lives serving the community
Such risky caring was practised in the first centuries of the Christian church. The widespread plagues of the time were devastating, especially in the late fourth century when up to 30 per cent of Roman citizens died. While anyone with any means within the empire “ran for the hills” out of fear of infection, the Christians stayed and cared for their neighbours. Sometimes they lost their life doing so. Historian Rodney Stark suggests that this way of practising Jesus’ compassion is the reason for the growth in respect and numbers of Christians. He observes that this “obscure, marginalized Jesus movement became the dominant religious force in the Western world in a few centuries.”
The Together Project website and this blog celebrate togetherness in Jesus Christ – across the divides of gender, race and social status. But such commitment to mix with and serve each other may have a cost. Let us not be risk adverse! We can learn from our African brothers and sisters.
Jennifer Turner
(Photo 2014)
