Council for Health and Human Service Ministries

From the President

Photo of Bryan Sickbert You might remember that last November, CHHSM Board member Ken Daniel and I traveled to Germany to join with our colleagues in the Union of Evangelical Churches (UEK) to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of full communion--called Kirchengemeinschaft. You can read more about that trip in my December 2005 column.

During last year's trip, we made plans to revive exchange and consultation between the diaconal institutions of the UEK and CHHSM. And so in late September, I traveled to Germany again. My trip included a UCC Forum meeting in Hanover as well as visits to several health and healing ministries of the UEK. In particular, I spent time with the Rev. Hans-Wilhelm Fricke-Hein, director of an agency called Neukirchener Erziehungsverein that provides long-term care, child and family services and care for the developmentally disabled, and the Rev. Matthias Dargel, director of Kaiserswerther Diakonie, an enormous teaching hospital, child and family service agency, long-term care facility and provider of services to the developmentally disabled.. I am delighted to report that both men will join us at the 2007 CHHSM Annual Meeting in Louisville.

The healing and service ministries of the UCC owe a great deal to Kaiserswerther Diakonie, located in the Rhineland in the town of Kaiserswerth. In 1839, Lutheran pastor Theodore Fliedner and his wife, Friederike, founded Kaiswerswerther Diakonie and the Deaconess Sisterhood, an order for young women who wished to devote themselves to healing work. The Fliedner's vision of nursing as ministry transformed both 19th century hospital life and the lives of single women who wanted to undertake the rigorous intellectual, technical and spiritual training available to Deaconess sisters. The success of their model for training nurses quickly spread across Europe and the United States: among their many students who traveled from far beyond Germany was a woman named Florence Nightingale.

In 1889, the Evangelical Synod in St. Louis, Missouri realized the need for young women trained in healing and service ministries and adopted the Kaiserswerth model as the basis for the Evangelical Deaconess Society. In turn, this group became the impetus for deaconess work in many ministries that are today members of CHHSM.1

The UCC's relationship with the UEK allows us to continue learning from the successes of our German brothers and sisters in healing ministry. While in Germany, I was able to learn more about the German method of funding long-term care, a model which is one of the sources for AAHSA's developing public policy effort in this country. I also learned more about new clinical therapies and treatment protocols including Snozelen, a high-stimulus regimen for people with dementia developed in the Netherlands.

I look forward to continuing this fruitful exchange of ideas for faithful ministry when the Revs. Fricke-Hein and Dargel visit with us in Louisville next March. Please plan now to join us!

Bryan W. Sickbert
President/CEO

UEK church
The UEK church on the Kasierswerth campus


The graves of Theodore Fliedner, founder of the Deaconess Sisterhood, and his second wife, Caroline, who was a Deaconess leader and friend of Florence Nightingale.

1You can learn more about the development of the Deaconess Movement from an article in the UCC's "Hidden Histories" series, posted at http://www.ucc.org/aboutus/histories/chap7.htm.

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