Steps for Churches Dealing With AIDs

In this article I want to examine key gifts the church brings to development.
We will look into the vision of what the church can do and explore it from another dimension, seeing development as a holistic task.Due to the fact that AIDS is devastating communities, we surely need a new kind of ministry to deal with it, based on the following:

1. Education
The church has a powerful network of educational resources: Sunday school, Confirmation class, or baptism class, seminary training.
We must deploy these resources in the battle to educate people about AIDS. People must be aware of the choices they can make before they are at risk from HIV.

2. Counseling
Education alone cannot stop the pandemic. People will take sexual risks. We need to deploy our 2,000 years of wisdom about care and compassion, drawn from the way of Christ.
Where a HIV test is positive, pre-test counseling moves on to difficult post-test counseling – one of the hardest tasks facing the church.

3. Advocacy
HIV/Aids pandemic is also a political and public policy problem.
Governments, the courts and the private sector all spend (or do not spend) time and money on the issue.
The churches have to address the leaders and the powerful in society about truth and justice. When multi-national pharmaceutical companies are making profits from Aids drugs it shows clearly how important it is for the church to speak out.

4. Caring
The care and compassion present during the counseling phase continues throughout the life of the person with Aids.
Looking after them, providing food and clean clothes, washing and doing housework, are some of the ways the church cares for those feeling the full impact of the virus. The church needs to get involved in projects that can help these people make a living and contribute to their community.

5. Bereavement
Death is not God’s final Word. Death signals another important task in the holistic ministry of the church. The church has to counsel the person who is dying and those who are left behind: parents, spouse, children and close friends.
Although the funeral is an opportunity to face death, and to remind ourselves that death is not the final Word, there needs to be a support system in the face of this crisis. We need new ways of bringing up children, integrating them into the community.

In conclusion the church has to think about what the pandemic means for faith, redemption and for the community and these aspects of a holistic ministry illustrate how wide and far-reaching the contribution of the church can be in social and community development.

We can make a difference
By Revd. J.A. Scholtz•