The Reformed Deacon
The Reformed Deacon is an interview and discussion podcast created by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church Committee on Diaconal Ministries. The Reformed Deacon exists to strengthen and encourage the brotherhood of reformed deacons in their God-given role of serving the local church. We hope you'll find this podcast to be helpful to you as you serve the Lord in your church. For more information about the OPC Committee on Diaconal Ministries, go to our website: OPCCDM.org. Contact us: mail@thereformeddeacon.org.
The Reformed Deacon
A Committee to Care for the Elderly: Harvest OPC
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In this episode, Rev. Adrian Crum, associate pastor at Harvest OPC in Wyoming, MI sits down with two of his deacons, Lynne Hunter and Cameron Brown to talk about the why and how of Harvest's newly constructed Elderly Committee or HARPs Group (Harvest Association of Retired Presbyterians.)
Lynne says, "Part of it was that we had, or have, a number of elderly folk that have no family and we were getting called in to help these people navigate murky waters. They could no longer live by themselves, and we were getting asked well, 'how can we help them?' And that's when we started exploring what we are supposed to do and what is our responsibility as deacons? And that was kind of some of the catalyst when we found that folder and started perusing through that and saying, okay, here's some good ideas, but it still doesn't give us the total answer. Now, we still don't have a total answer, but we're working on it."
Referenced in this episode:
Survey of Talents (created by Cameron Brown)
The Reformed Deacon Real World Cases: Be Proactive
If I Should Die (booklet Cameron refers to given out by David Haney)
Barnabus Foundation (Financial Planning available to all OPC members)
Committee on Diaconal Ministries Summits
Contact Lynne Hunter
Contact Cameron Brown
Contact Rev. Adrian Crum
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So it's not specifically for the committee or the deacons to come up with a care or the need, but we are here to also, if we can't meet the need, make the connection to somebody else who can, and I think that's very powerful and that's where we want to go as a body of Christ. We're brothers and sisters. We want to be able to have that kind of community. We want to be able to have that kind of community.
David Nakhla:Welcome to the Reformed Deacon. A casual conversation with topics specifically designed to help local Reformed Deacons. There are nearly a thousand deacons in the OPC alone, so let's take this opportunity to learn from and encourage one another.
Adrian Crum:We're so glad you could join us. Let's jump into our next episode. My name is Adrian Crum. I'm a pastor at Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the greater Grand Rapids, michigan area, and I'm so grateful to serve on the OPC's Committee on Diaconal Ministries and today we have the privilege, on the Reformed Deacon, of welcoming Lynn Hunter and Cameron Brown, two gentlemen that I serve with. They're deacons here at Harvest and we're going to be talking today about our elderly committee here at Harvest. It's a committee of our deacons that was established to help in caring for those who are growing elderly in our community, and Lynn, our deacon, referenced this committee on a previous episode of the podcast.
Adrian Crum:If you are a listener to the Reformed Deacon Podcast, that episode was called Real World Cases Be Proactive.
Adrian Crum:Be sure to go and take a listen to that when you can, and there's some excellent insights in that episode.
Adrian Crum:I really recommend you listen. So we thought it'd be really helpful for us to explain more about Harvest Elderly Committee and talk a little bit about its goals as well as work to serve our seasoned saints, deacons and members alike, and we understand that the situations that other OPC churches may be in, or any church that you're in, may be a little different than Harvest's situation, but we're praying that some of the principles and some of the things that we've learned would be a benefit to you all. So we see in Acts 6 that caring for widows was actually the very origin of the diaconal office. And then Paul in 1 Timothy 5 and James, chapter 127, places a very, very high commitment on caring for widows in a congregation. So I wanted to just hear a little bit of the background story and Lynn or Cam feel free to take it away the background story of why do we focus on caring for the elderly at Harvest and how are elders involved for some of the deeper spiritual aspects as well.
Cameron Brown:So, as far as I'm concerned, in the past, I'm not sure if there was a committee focused on the elderly specifically until, I believe, the middle of last year, which was 2023. It had come to our attention that we would need a specific set of people to kind of organize and figure out how we can better shepherd the aging and elderly at church. A few of the first conversations that we had kind of revolved around I don't know if I want to say a holistic approach, not necessarily for spiritual needs, but as far as we were focused on end-of-life care, retirement, the many legal things that aging and elderly people deal with, medicare, social Security, how to navigate those murky waters as they rely on other benefits since they're not receiving normal paycheck from an employer that they may have used to work for. So we had found back in the day, we had a folder that had a bunch of resources in it and a bunch of areas for somebody to fill out.
Lynne Hunter:It was Ken Vandermolen, and the folder you're referencing was given to us by David Haney and it had to do with willing and trust and making the OPC one of your benefactors when you die Right.
Cameron Brown:So we found that in church and realized we wanted to revamp that and maybe come up with our own way to kind of rewrite it to be easier to work through with aging or elderly folks. That was a good starting point. So more legalistic approach on where does an elderly person, whether a widow or a couple, at harvest, where do they stand in the real world? How are they surviving and do they need help checking the boxes to make sure they're being responsible financially, caring for their family?
Lynne Hunter:Part of it was that we had, or have, a number of elderly folk that have no family and we were getting called in to help these people navigate murky waters. They could no longer live by themselves. And we were getting asked well, how can we help them? And that's when we started exploring what are we supposed to, what is our responsibility as deacons? And that was kind of some of the catalyst when we found that folder and started perusing through that and saying, okay, here's some good ideas, but it still doesn't give us the total answer. Now, we still don't have a total answer, but we're working on it.
Adrian Crum:Good yeah, and I think it'll just be helpful for our listeners to. I think every church can probably relate just about every church can relate to this. I'm new at Harvest in the last three years but our church is about 30 years old and many of our churches in the OPC are getting to an older average age. If you guys were to put a guess on a ratio, a percentage of the congregation that is, let's say, over 65, what would you guess is the 20% of our congregation of Communicate members of our congregation.
Lynne Hunter:let's classify it a little bit 20% of the Communicate members of our congregation are over 65.
Adrian Crum:So that's a pretty high number, one out of every five, yeah.
Lynne Hunter:If we used the congregation as a whole baptized members and Communicate together, then it's 9%, but at 20% that means there is a fair number of our congregation that is in that category and just so you know, that number will probably go up by another 3% to 5% next year.
Adrian Crum:Yeah, yeah. So do you think of family members, let's say, who are not members of Harvest? As people, you would also, obviously, if someone is able to depend on their family scripturally speaking, we want to have family members care for other family members, but if there was a very hard situation of an elderly person, let's say, who was related to a Harvest member, how do you think about that as deacons?
Lynne Hunter:Let me understand your question Yep Harvest member. How do you think about that as deacons? Let me understand your question, Yep. If I had a parent that was not a member of Harvest but I was taking care of? Them let's say I wasn't able to take care of them. What would the deacons of Harvest do?
Adrian Crum:Is that kind of what your answer question is? That's a great reformatting of the question. I was thinking hypothetically any person who is connected somehow to a person who's aging and they can't care for them. How do deacons think about non-members? But your question is excellent, lynn.
Lynne Hunter:I think we would. In a certain sense, we think in the same vein. We take care of many people from outside our church, where we help, and I think we would step in and try to guide this person or this family in the same way. And we have actually had similar not quite the, but similar situations where we've had people who have family members that are not taking care of their elderly family members and we have stepped in and taken control of those situations. And that's part of where this whole committee, if you want to call it, or basis of why did the deacons at harvest look at it comes from. Because when you do this, it's stepping into the whole thing and you end up in some cases having to become a legal guardian of that person, so it becomes a tricky situation.
Adrian Crum:Yeah, yeah, that would be very, very complicated. So another question I had was are all the people on this committee caring for the elderly harvest deacons, or do you have non-deacons who are members at harvest serve in some way to care for the elderly harvest?
Cameron Brown:So this committee alone, obviously with the amount of members we have and elderly, would not be able to be sustainable in taking care of them solely for their needs. So, where the committee was created, to give direction, to find resources and to make the connections within the church, I think is a few of our main goals. We can go beyond that, obviously, with calling but, like we just discussed, understanding the need in Scripture tells us all of us, right away, I mean to seek help from family first. We're living in faith. We are called to take care of our mother and father right as children, and so that's the first step is understanding where they are in life and if they are a true widow. I say true widow meaning they don't have any family around children or parents, obviously, for that matter. If the church is their family, we are called to take them under our care, which is difficult in waters. We need to figure out how to walk together. But as far as who takes care of them, one thing I put together recently, which Adrian and Lynn are aware of, is a quick survey of talents throughout the church. Survey of talents throughout the church. This was a widespread survey just to collect interest and talents from all the members at Harvest. Upon receiving feedback, we had a good response and one of the gifts, if you were, was caring for the elderly. So that gave me ability to see the gifts within the church on a broader scale, so not just in the deacons or elder groups. So if we are approached with a need from an elderly in a specific way, whether it's a little bit of home care, we see that right now with one of our great members, one of our great members. But that was a way to give some outreach and get some more support from the congregation because obviously deacons were all men, elders they're all men in the church.
Cameron Brown:If we are approached with a need from a female, if it's an in-home care, we are asked to take care of some needs. Obviously we would want a female to be able to make that connection. We've seen that just works better in this world to make it more comfortable for everyone. That just allowed us to then take that group of people who said their gift was caring for the elderly. I can shoot an email in their direction and say, hey, we were approached with this need from this member, or it could be somebody from the outside, as we discussed as well, and would you be willing, if you are so called, to take care of that person for a time being in any sort of way?
Cameron Brown:So it's not specifically for the committee or the deacons to come up with a care or the need, but we are here to also, if we can't meet the need, make the connection to somebody else who can, and I think that's very powerful and that's where we want to go as a body of Christ. We're brothers and sisters. We want to be able to have that kind of community throughout the whole church. We don't want to isolate it to just specific groups to do this, and I think that's just going to build God's kingdom even more and help us to love each other. But so, yeah, hopefully that answers the question a little bit.
Adrian Crum:Excellent. Yeah, so 1 Timothy 5 has some of the principles that you referenced. I'm just going to read 1 Timothy 5, 16. It says if any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it may care for those who are truly widows. I love the fact that the New Testament assumes that there's going to be multi-generations. In the Bible we are not saved as individuals, but God saves us and our grandparents and our parents and our children. So is this committee proactive? Do you check in with those who are over a certain age on a rotation, or you just wait for things to come to you when you sense the needs arise? Or is there some sort of combination of both?
Cameron Brown:I feel like we're reactive, I would agree, and I don't mean that in a bad way. But if I said we were Mostly, I would say most of our elderly congregation are a part of that group which they go through fellowship, bible study and prayer opportunities outside of the church, so they're very well connected with brothers and sisters in Christ. What that means is a lot of those needs, loneliness, questions they have could possibly be answered by who they're surrounding themselves with in that group, and that does take the burden off the church right there and the deacons, because maybe there's things that are being met and prayers being answered within that group. But I think, with the committee starting, we wanted to try and be more proactive. We wanted to understand the congregation and their needs and how we could better equip ourselves to handle those needs. And those are things we're still working through. We're not going to be able to perfect this 100%. I would say if we can even get to a passing rate of 70 or something would be great, but every need is different. Something would be great, but every need is different and with each need we, under careful consideration, we pray that we have the wisdom to be able to answer to a call. So the little things like checking the boxes can help, like getting a little brochure together to hand off to an elderly who's got questions about Medicare. That's great. We can serve in those ways as well. That gets us partial of the way there.
Cameron Brown:The committee was created to kind of weed through resources, if I start going down that road. We did a lot of research on local areas around West Michigan that focuses on helping the aging population and we narrowed that all the way down to one group Area Agencies on Aging which is a West Michigan group, and they have all the resources and I have introduced one of the I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but I believe he was a director there. He came into one of the HARPS meetings and I joined him and he gave a brief presentation on what the agency does and then after the meeting I was approached by some of the folks there that, yeah, they call me every week making sure I know when to sign up for Medicare or Social Security. I'm not familiar with any of that right now. I pray that I might make it there.
Cameron Brown:But yeah, the stuff is known but it also might not be for some of those out there who are just approaching that age. So those are some of the things we want to do to be proactive. So those are some of the things we want to do to be proactive, having the resources at hand so we can readily give them out when the questions are asked and then continually, maybe bring that resource in once a year to do the little 20 minute spiel on what the agency does and how they can help support, and I think that stuff's important for the church and I think it's, yeah, as our community. That's our duty and that's what we're trying to focus on.
Adrian Crum:Thank you so much. So let's say I'm kind of putting myself in the shoes of a listener. They're thinking to themselves wow, harvest sounds very organized and there's lots and lots of things happening because it's a very large church. How could you apply some of the principles of what you guys are talking about to a congregation, let's imagine, of 40 people in a rural area. They have one deacon, maybe two, and they're thinking how do I care for the four or five elderly people in our congregation? Do some of the things you're speaking about apply to a smaller congregation? How could you help a deacon in that context?
Cameron Brown:Yeah, so I can imagine a smaller congregation with, I'm just going to say, one deacon. So that's a lot of people. Let's say half of them are elderly, that's 20 people coming to one person to fulfill a lot of questions and needs. That would be very overwhelming, at least to me. Let's say that one deacon has four kids running around at home under five. Talk about stressful. But I would encourage that congregation to do kind of what I did as far as reaching out to the congregation to figure out kind of the gifts and talents we go back to that on how they can help support each other. That would give that deacon an opportunity to focus on a specific group outreach to them. Okay, you're good at caring for the elderly. I have this need. How can you come alongside me and help me?
Cameron Brown:We talked about the scripture not just being pinpointing towards deacons or elders, but to all of followers of Christ. That would be very hard, that that deacon would have to be a little bit more outspoken, probably if it's just one of them, otherwise it's going to be very difficult for him to navigate and communicate with all the people within their church. So outreach is important. The pastor, elder if there's an elder, a couple elders could walk alongside him to kind of help navigate and make those connections. To kind of help navigate and make those connections, our deacons within our church.
Cameron Brown:I have my name and I have a number of members underneath me whether it's split up alphabetically, but we kind of have an even amount of members within the church that are assigned to a deacon. I could imagine a smaller church being okay. I have split up into, let's say, a couple groups of five or so and then you just mix match some members who might be accountable for checking in with that family and the deacon can come alongside them, make sure they're making the connection, ask that group have you reached out to so-and-so? I think it has to be a very close-knit family community. I would assume it is with a smaller church, but yeah, with a larger church like Harvest, we do have to be a little bit more structured, I feel like Otherwise things could get a little bit hairy.
Adrian Crum:Excellent. No, I think that's a really really helpful answer. Thank you, cam. Do you have something else, lynn, you want to say?
Lynne Hunter:Yeah, I would also suggest that this rural congregation, the deacon, look out further than his congregation. We're Presbyterian church government. We start with the session who has deacons serving with them in a local congregation. But that local congregation isn't an island sitting by itself. It is a member of a larger community called the Presbytery, and in the OPC each Presbytery has a presbytery diaconate. Some of them are structured a little bit different but they're all kind of heading toward the same way.
Lynne Hunter:The michigan ontario presbytery works where there's members of different churches that serve the presbytery diaconate and that deacon could in theory, or should, look to that broader church and then the broader church, the presbytery diaconate, and also look out further and go to the denomination, the Committee on Diaconal Ministries, and ask for more help or more advice. And so a single deacon should never say, man, I don't know what to do. There should always be another church that he could look to. So every church in Michigan should be able to look out and say, hey, who can I look to to help? Our brothers in Canada can look at all the churches the five or six Canadian churches that we have, and say how can we navigate the system there? The Canadian system is a little bit different than the US system, but don't feel like you're on an island by yourself and have to conquer the problem by yourself.
Adrian Crum:Very good. No, that's excellent and a good plug, lynn, for the work of our committee, because one of the things that we do is connect deacons. We train Presbyterial committees of deacons all around the country. We actually have a summit what is that? Every two or three years, where we will gather the committees of presidenciaries and speak about some of these issues. How do we support local churches that may not have a large diaconate? We just have to do it.
Adrian Crum:Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking of a situation where someone and again, there's a lot of good work ethic here in West Michigan at least, but I think sometimes we can be very proud to try to ask for any help and so being willing to press through and demonstrate that we actually care enough to ask some of those hard questions and then help people out in hard situations. So, cam and Lynn let's say someone has been listening to this. They're really, really appreciating some of the practical advice that you're offering and they're thinking man, I want to launch my own elderly committee. What would be three takeaways from today's conversation? How would you say these are the three things that you need to start doing to get an elderly support committee started?
Cameron Brown:One. I would start with understanding what we are called to do in Scripture, and I want to point to a passage that is very relevant and well-known. So, philippians 2, 3 through 8. I think this could be even a model for this type of committee in your foundation.
Cameron Brown:So, philippians 2, 3 through 8, nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. So let each of you look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, which we are now called of being born in likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and understanding what we're being called to do there, and it's all over throughout scripture, not just there. Talk about honoring your father and your mother, john 19, when Jesus was on the cross, looking down at John, and just meditate on to understand what they're called to do and how they are to move forward in shepherding the congregation in that way. So that would be step one creating a good foundation on why you are doing what you're doing.
Cameron Brown:Step two find people. Lynn, do you have anything else for step one? Maybe I like your step one.
Lynne Hunter:Your step two find people. But I would go to your other document that you created, your survey. Find your congregation, who is your congregation, what gifts does your congregation have and how can they help? And then from that, find if we're a small congregation or even a large congregation as ours. Find two or three people that can join or are willing to join and help. Don't take all the burden of the work on your diaconate.
Cameron Brown:Yeah, I think, along with step two, not just knowing the number and the age of your congregation but getting to know your congregation. So that survey really helped in understanding what people were called and are willing to do to help walk alongside that deacon as this next resource and the resources that we had done research on that could be the second part of step two. But understanding your community outside of your church, either, finding Christian resources, even non-Christian resources, that help with aging and elderly folks, so within your local community. I think a little bit of work can be done there to figure out where you can send people to to answer those basic questions, which I wouldn't know anything about Social Security or Medicare. But there are professionals out there who volunteer to do this and that was the guy who came in and talked to our HARPS group. He has dedicated his life to communicating with elderly people to help them navigate all of those different options that they have, and that deacon or that church needs to figure out what those resources are to be able to hand those reaching out to the elderly, asking the questions maybe not asking them in a prodding way like the Social Security phone would assume for a really, really long time and they are well-developed Christians. They know scripture, they know where they're going at the end of their life, Praise the Lord.
Cameron Brown:I'm not saying that's 100% always the case, but they are very wise people. So we just need to lightly ask the questions if they understand, or just getting to know them. We don't need to even ask them questions about those things, but kind of understanding. I guess the first thing is how long they've been a member at the church. Do they have family around? What brought them to your church? What do you like about the church? Those are just basic questions that can get you a communication rolling in some sort of relationship where they might look to you and reach back out to you if they do have a question about something more personal. So I think it needs to start there, building the relationship in step three with everybody in the church.
Adrian Crum:Let's say there is total familial breakdown in the family. Let's say the kids are not speaking to their parents anymore, but they're both in the same church. How would you help someone in that situation? Certainly, elders may need to be involved in that, but if there's relational breakdown between children and their parents, does that somehow release the obligation to care for parents? Or how would you approach that as deacons? If someone says I don't even talk to my parents anymore, but they're in a really hard financial situation?
Cameron Brown:We're talking to a very small fraction and that's where it gets very hard and you get the families that are disconnected or dysfunctional and children that don't think it's their responsibility, their parents. They probably say they should have been able to figure this out from the start and it's sad that that happens. But the church is then called to step in, I would believe, to take that burden off the parent's shoulders. We know that it is from the blind man. It is not because the parent has sinned that the man was born blind, but it was the will of God right so that he might come to faith and see. I think that's where we would stand is not to put any guilt on the parents or the children, but there's a physical and spiritual need that the church needs to fill and has been called to fill. So I don't think we would task if the parents come to us and say, yes, my child. I'm assuming they're lost without faith at that point. If they're Christians, maybe they need a little bit of guiding and teaching. That was more my question.
Adrian Crum:Two members of your church. They're both professing to be Christians, but through some relational breakdown they are not talking to each other anymore.
Cameron Brown:I said it was thorny From those two members in the church are no longer talking. That's right they don't. They don't get the afternoon coffee invitation for grandma anymore but the grandma and the in the son is at church together yep, same church.
Adrian Crum:I am sure some of you have seen this.
Lynne Hunter:I've seen this thorny situation. The church is still called to help both sides and there's two aspects to the help. And guess what? The deacons do not get to throw the spiritual aspect side over the wall 100% to the elders. The elders have to know about it. The elders will probably be assisting, but the deacons will still have to come in and help on the physical side and the spiritual side. So Harvest conducts regular family visitation. This one might have more than regular family visitation. This one might have monthly or even weekly visitation, and so it gets a little bit more tricky. But on both sides, both elders and deacons. But if it's deacon-led, you're trying to lead the two parties back together because the call of the gospel doesn't allow us to split the family. The call of the gospel says hey, we love Jesus Christ, and if we love Jesus Christ we have to love our neighbor. And if we love our neighbor then I have to love my father and mother.
Cameron Brown:You can't have one without the other.
Lynne Hunter:Yeah, you can't divorce the two If you're going to have a with jesus christ, and we love jesus, praise then, we have to help bring that gap back. Yep, excellent, very good it's not a easy situation.
Adrian Crum:Good, yeah, I was trying to hide the fact that deacons are not just the holders of the checkbook right, just sending off money to people. It's a lot of very complicated circumstances like this where you're needing to hold people's hands and pray for them.
Lynne Hunter:Yeah, deacons, and I would say Harvest is a good example. We are not buildings and bugs, not buildings and bugs. We are ministers of mercy and it has nothing to do with buildings and bugs. It has to do with the spiritual life of people that are in need. And yeah, we have. We do work with money, we do work with legal documents and that kind of stuff, but it's all in regards to the helping of people. Hey, the building might have to fall down around us because that's not our job. Our job goes back to what you read in Act 6 to help those that are in need, and that's both on the spiritual and the physical side.
Adrian Crum:Very good. Yeah, I got another specific hard question for you guys. I'm going to have a hypothetical guy named Luke who asked to visit your committee. He comes to sit down with you and he says I got a really hard situation. My parents are in their 80s, mid 80s. They're not safe on the stairs, up and down the stairs. We have sat down with them. My extended family sat down with my parents and told them they need to move into assisted living and they said absolutely not, we're staying in our home. I certainly understand the desire to stay in a comfortable place, but if you've encountered this before as deacons, what counsel and how would you help a family, an extended family, through an issue like that, where they're trying to care for their parents but their parents are not maybe noticing some of the dangers of staying in their home?
Cameron Brown:How would you respond? Honor your father and your mother and their wishes? Possibly it's a tricky one, but is their child making these decisions selfishly, as in when I say selfishly, do they not want to provide you care for their parents if they were to have an emergency at home, fall down the stairs. There are things that you can do within the home to make it more, uh, accessible, uh, to either handicapped or elderly people. So, making everything on one level, putting everything below cabinet level on countertops in high-vis areas, getting rid of some delicate furniture, those are all ways that that son or daughter could potentially help in honoring their father and their mother's wishes.
Cameron Brown:I don't think it's right or reasonable to force a parent out of somewhere that they're comfortable living, unless there is a very urgent medical need. If we're talking about, like a dementia issue, something that's making them physically handicapped, where they can't provide a basic need for themselves a shower or going to the bathroom, that's where you'd start to really encourage, and the church might step in to shepherd the elderly and try to spiritually walk them through whether they're making the decision selfishly to stay within the home. It'll go back and forth, probably. But yeah, I think yeah if it's just an easy case of they don't want to move out of their house just because they can't get up some stairs. I think the first thing would be to look at whether in-home care how that fits in. A nurse comes to the house once or a couple times a week. That's all possible. That's done all over the place, and we would look at what is the child doing for their parents. Are they visiting regularly? If the child of an elderly has a true, deep-rooted faith in Christ and caring for others, if they're deeply rooted in faith and honoring Christ, they will do what's necessary to keep their parents in a home that they so love.
Cameron Brown:I'd put myself in that kid's shoes. My parents are 80 plus. I want to be the person that wants to spend as much time as I can with them in their last years. I would be very disappointed in myself if I didn't have the ambition to do that. There would be something lacking in my heart if that were the case and I hope I'm aware of that when the time comes. I pray that I have a generous heart towards them when it gets to be that time. But yeah, I think that's a tough one. Somewhere in there there's some selfish decisions happening and we just would have to figure out the root of it.
Adrian Crum:Excellent. Yeah, lynn, this question is for you. Let's say, a person in their 60s or 70s has a surprise medical procedure. They suddenly get just a flood of bills in the mail and it's very, very difficult for them to understand even their own insurance and how those things will be covered. How would you help someone navigate some of those questions? They're very fearful. They don't know if they're going to be able to make ends meet. How would you encourage a member when they're struggling to understand some of the billing issues with their doctor's appointments?
Lynne Hunter:Well, that's the one thing I think Harvest has an advantage being big. We have resources in our own congregation that work in the hospitals. No, they cannot, because of HIPAA laws they cannot look at the various situations. But we can create examples or we can even talk to them, with permission from that person, about the bill and we can come up with creative ways to understand what can this person do to help pay this bill. We can look at it holistically and say you know, you're going to be walking alongside this person. Hopefully, if the deaconate is working right, they already know who this person is even before they have the surgery and things overwhelm them and so that they are familiar with you and are willing to share and so you understand their finances. And then you just you step up by them and maybe even it's take time from your daily activity or evening and you help them with the telephone calls to the doctor's office, to the hospital, to the billing departments, and you just give them that reassurance and help them through.
Lynne Hunter:What questions do I ask? How do I set up payment plans? And then, with harvest deaconate, you would become the intermediator and go back to the harvest deaconate and say, hey, okay, so we've worked through all the options. They can pay this much of the bill. There's going to be this much left. Is the harvest deacon willing to pay this out of the nab? And we ask the deacons as a whole to contribute. And that is just the biggest thing here, I think, is knowing who is in your congregation and knowing who to approach to ask questions about finance, and then knowing how to take that knowledge and help that person understand that it's not something that's going to. It feels overwhelming, but there's others to bear that burden with them. So what you really have to do is people have to realize yes, we're individuals, but we belong to a great big family and sometimes those family secrets that we don't want to share with others has to be shared.
Adrian Crum:Good. Any questions or other comments you guys would want to add before we wrap up?
Lynne Hunter:I would suggest that the CDM, in one of their next summits where we've invited all the deacons to just like a general assembly, I would suggest that in one of those summits that would be upcoming is that we put a section in on this topic. It's a good idea Because we are an aging church on both ends. We have a lot of young families, but there's a lot of older families in the OPC.
Adrian Crum:Very true, yeah, yeah, well, thank you, cameron Brown and Lynn Hunter, deacons at Harvest Church. It's been an honor to have you on the Reformed Deacon podcast and it is just an honor to serve with you, brothers, at our church together. I always appreciate our meetings together, our times of prayer. I see your heart and your love for our congregation together, our times of prayer. I see your heart and your love for our congregation and, as a pastor, I'm so encouraged and I see the way that you love the people here with true mercy and the gospel.
David Nakhla:Thanks for joining us. Go to our website, thereformdeaconorg. There you will find all our episodes, program notes and other helpful resources, and please make plans to join us again for another episode of the Reformed Deacon Podcast.