Salus Forum December 3, 2025

Jack

Bill, I think the answer is Yes. And I think if you look back at the history of healthcare, from a sort of historical perspective, churches often built hospitals. The Presbyterian Hospital in Denver was built by the church I attended, Central Presbyterian, and a few others in the city, but this was a very common occurrence. And then the for-profit world and the health organizations and the large health agencies and health systems sort of have taken over. And now, even the not-for-profit hospitals still make a lot of profit. The University of Colorado made $1.3 billion of profit last year. After every bill was paid, they had a pile of money of $1.3 billion.

So, churches are an absolute, in my mind, an absolute necessity. Whether or take on the system and say, we’re going to build our own hospitals again, we’re going to deliver our own healthcare in a systematic way that does not plunder profit for shareholders.

Bill G

That’s sort of the direction in which I am most interested in. How does the healing ministry and the theology of the healing ministry work into the organizational churches? And clearly, in past times, there was a lot of direct operation, at least of hospital facilities. I actually worked for two organizations, spent over half my career working for religious organization that sponsored large hospital systems and watched them evolve from being primarily directed by the nuns to being directed by the lay employees. They were starting to resemble any other large not-for-profit organization. But the other thing I’ve had experience with is my spouse, some of you know, is a PhD clinical psychologist. And when we were working for the Sisters of Humility of Mary back in Ohio, she was actually hired by the sisters to provide mental health services to both the sisters and some of the Jesuit brothers.

Because within the churches themselves, I think the more enlightened clergy realized there’s a whole bunch of mental health challenges. There was a lot of alcoholism, there were sexual issues, obviously. There was a lot of depression. So, clerical professionals were dealing with the challenges of being a clergy. The stresses of being a member of the clergy were not just physical, for in most cases, the congregation provided their clergy with pretty good health insurance. However, the mental health aspects of dealing with dysfunctional clergy are pretty huge.

Bill B

The other issue that was addressed when I was involved with the Methodist Church concerned the children of pastors. So, Jack, the PKs, the preacher’s kids, the stuff that was coming out of, the stuff that was coming out, the stuff that was coming out of the studies we did there is how, what a horrible life. Because first of all, these kids had no pastor to go to. It was assumed that they were attending their own father’s or mother’s church. And so these kids were sitting there and having major problems. I mean, it’s hard being the son, Jack, being the son of a pastor and having no place to go when seeking assistance. We found that that was a major problem for the PKs, especially if they went on to become pastors themselves, that the wounding was there in their own childhood or whatever.