Reverend Gary Gunderson

Faith is easiest to see in tough times and in tough towns like Memphis and smaller communities such as Reidsville and Martinsville, Va., and Lexington. Faith is what you have to work with when the factories leave, the technology changes, the financial climate shifts so radically that it is hard to recognize the streets where life has thrived for decades.

On Oct. 23, Wake Forest Baptist Health — Lexington Medical Center will convene a community forum at 7 p.m. at First Baptist Church on West Third Avenue about how the Memphis Model of building large-scale networks of congregations might be adapted to the realities of the Lexington area. Memphis and Lexington are very different places, but in both the social fabric is woven from the ties bound up in faith. That faith is not about ideas, but in God’s grace expressed through actions of care, support, guidance and practical help in connecting people to what they need.

In Memphis, the faith-based hospital, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare, nurtured a web of trust among nearly 500 congregations of all denominations. It took a few years, but once the volunteers in the congregations were trained, we saw that the members from those congregations experienced four new quality indicators. They came a) at the right time (usually early, not late), b) at the right door (hopefully to their primary care doc or clinic, not the ER), c) ready to be treated (mainly, not scared and worried, but also with their list of prescriptions) and most importantly d) not alone. If most patients accomplished those four things, the efficiency, quality and cost of their care would be much lower.

And, in fact, that’s just what we saw with the thousands of patients of all races and income levels from our congregations in Memphis when compared to our other patients. By themselves, patients usually can’t accomplish those things. When we are sick, we depend on those who love us; our families, but often our congregations, could step in.

The Memphis Model is challenging for hospitals because the staff must be retrained, too. Methodist Healthcare invested countless hours into training employees and physicians in new protocols with new techniques and created some brand new positions, too. Partnership is about real shared work.

Wake Forest Baptist Health will have to learn how to be a partner in a whole new way that is challenging for a proud academic medical center. We are used to being a teaching medical center, and now we must be a teachable medical center. This is partly why we hope to start to learn this new way of caring in Lexington where the hospital has long had a gentle and open spirit with abundant trust in the community.

The first step is to identify the available assets relevant to health. Everybody knows the problems and can list what is missing. In every tough town, we are so aware of what has left that we can hardly see what is still here. Memphis used a model for mapping faith assets developed in the toughest possible places dealing with HIV/AIDS in Africa. There we found six times the programs and resources on the ground that the government knew anything about, which is likely true in Davidson County, too.

These lessons are worth learning as they point the way for both partners to find new vitality, meaning and effectiveness in fulfilling our missions. What grows up in Lexington will be the Lexington Model, different from Memphis. For one thing, it cannot revolve around just one health system. The congregations of the Triad will need and deserve for their strengths and connections to “work” at Wake Forest Baptist Health but also Novant, Cone Health, High Point Regional and anywhere else their members and neighbors seek care.

The Memphis Model demonstrates that when connected in trust every part of the web thrives and works more efficiently. People become better quicker, stay better longer while costing less. This is not due to magic, but faith, which is biblically the substance of that not yet seen (at least in the Piedmont). On Oct. 23, we’ll begin to help each other begin to see what might be possible.

Dr. Gary Gunderson became vice president for faith and health ministries at Wake Forest Baptist Health in July after serving in that role at Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare in Memphis for seven years.