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Symposium speaker calls for paradigm shift to build healthy communities
Like so many others of the Vietnam era, Gary’s foray into war protests and social activism as a college student caused him to question his politics, his upbringing, and his conservative Christian faith. With his shifting worldview, Gary “assumed I had to throw out Jesus, too.” But then someone handed him a book of writings by Martin Luther King, Jr. “(King) allowed me to stay a Christian.” Gary explains. He soon realized that King’s dream of a beloved community, an integrated society where love and justice bind all people in brotherhood, was in reality God’s vision. “That’s the same dream I’m captured by. What my life is about, what God wants me to do, is be part of God’s dream of the beloved community.”
“Memphis is one of the poorest cities in the U.S. – a terrible bitter history – but it’s a city that is very rich in its communities of faith. There are 2000 churches within one and a half hours of my office,” Gary says. This is particularly significant to Gary, an ordained Baptist minister. He spent 15 years leading Emory University’s Interfaith Health Program, scouring the world for faith-health solutions that worked. Now he’s in a more hands-on role that allows him to implement those ideas as the senior vice president and director of the Center of Excellence in Faith and Health for a large integrated healthcare network. “I experience the real power of faith when it is appreciated and set free and brought into alignment with other faith structures. What I’m experiencing is a touch of wonder that faith can really do hard work, very large scale,” he said.
His ideas are largely extolled in his most recent book, Leading Causes of Life, which helps people build successful initiatives by focusing on the language of life instead of the language of death. The book was conceived five years ago in Milwaukee – the same city in which he’ll convene with National Symposium goers this year – as he addressed another large conference. Approaching the podium on the heels of a moving speaker, Gary threw out his scripted notes and spoke from the heart. “I had been mulling for many years about the frustration I felt about health science’s fascination with the causes of death. Our attention, our imagination, our intellectual work is all focused on death and preventing death,” Gary explains, adding that what most people claim are “health” studies or programs actually explore the negative forces of disease, risk factors and dying. “I got up there and said I refuse to study death anymore.” Instead, Gary reframes people’s thinking and language to reflect a model of life built upon connection, coherence, agency, blessing and hope. What sounds abstract and heady becomes clearer by example: an adolescent obesity program. Reframing the issues in the language of life reveals that successful weight-loss programs focus less on food and more on the social connections of the individual. “You find with many people struggling with obesity that food is a symptom of their sense of deep separation and loneliness. It’s their way of responding to disconnection,” Gary says. “The answer to disconnection is connection, which is something the church ought to know something about. “Most powerful youth obesity programs are those that help kids reclaim their neighborhood, go build a house for somebody, go work with other kids. You use this agency of a person to help them find their own life and they end up losing weight.”
Gary adds that the idea-sharing and connections made at a National Symposium are a catalyst for the paradigm shift. During his 10 years working alongside President Jimmy Carter on grassroots health initiatives as part of the Interfaith Health Program, Gary came to understand that there are very few new ideas, but many new applications. “Leaders shouldn’t spend their time on raw creativity,” he explains. “They should spend their time on finding the other leaders in other communities that have already found the way forward.”
Written by Jennifer Halupnik |
“The times they are a-changin',” croons Bob Dylan as he describes the social and political upheaval of the ‘60s in song. The lyrics depict both the cultural backdrop in which Gary Gunderson discovered his life’s calling and his present-day writings on building healthier communities.
Today, Gary finds himself doing just that. While his pursuit of the beloved community doesn’t warrant King’s newspaper headlines or death threats, it’s revolutionary just the same. Miles from the Memphis hotel where King was slain in 1968, Gary looks out over the embattled Southern city from his office window at Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare. He holds much hope that modern health sciences and communities of faith can join together to build healthy communities.
Gary will share from his wealth of research and experience as a keynote speaker at Wheat Ridge Ministries’ National Symposium on Health and Hope this October. He will challenge modern-day thinking – and talking – about health and wellness as he calls for a paradigm shift in the way we approach these issues. Indeed, the times in health and wellness are a-changin’ too.
The Leading Causes of Life approach can be applied to a wide array of health issues and leadership roles, according to Gary. And, faith organizations play a distinctive role in the process. “Faith is all about life. The Leading Causes of Life should be our natural language. If you go back and read your Scriptures, you find out this was here all along… Almost everything you’d want to do around health works better in a faith-based institution. It’s because the institution is not about disease, it’s about life.”