Body and Soul Medicine: Reflection on the Developing Lake Nona Medical City

[I wrote following post a year ago. After attending the "Healthy Community Symposium" at the Lake Nona YMCA this evening I decided to share it.]

I believe the church offers a critical but sometimes overlooked contribution to the story of Lake Nona's developing medical city in Orlando, Florida. The church won't be the engine that fires up new jobs in the medical city, but it must be the conscience of the science. Good work isn't good just because it produces financial wealth for a community. Good work must reflect the work of God, who is actively working to restore justice, relationships, and wholeness to all creation.

The long-term success of any city cannot be based solely on employment rates and profit margins. Success must be rooted in a larger story. The church's job is to remind people of that story.

God has done some amazing things with dirt. He made us for one thing! God gave us an inventive spirit, a desire for justice, and a longing for a healthy world. Remembering all this helps our lives and cities take on an attitude of gratitude, joy and humility.

God knows that we are prone to be impressed with our own sense of self-importance and consequently sabotage community. God knows that we too quickly resent what others have and ignore what we've been given. God knows we will forget that we are the creatures and He is the Creator. God knows we are predisposed to use our power destructively rather than constructively. And God knows His power is all that is capable of restoring all that is broken.

The church is that community of people who are called to be living proof of God's power to restore bodies and souls. To put it bluntly, Christians are really screwed up people who trust a gracious God to help us love our enemies, put others first yet treat our bodies like God's temple, attend to the suffering and restore dignity to the ignored. This is the body and soul medicine that Jesus makes possible through his resurrection from the dead and the power of the Holy Spirit. Though spiritual, this is a real world, earthy calling.

I am reminded of a prayer that Jesus taught his disciples: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." If the church is doing its job, then it should be making a difference on this earth. Because of the church, things here ought to be looking more like God intends them to be. This is the larger story in which this medical city (and every city) can find its true success.

We know there will be more jobs and more money generated (2,900 between the VA and Nemours by 2012), but how will this economic vigor contribute to the reconciliation of people and communities? How will it inspire people to care for the earth? How will it include the overlooked and the ignored in places of honor?

I'm glad to hear the church raising these kind of questions at community symposiums, coffee shops, board meetings, ball games and dinner tables. They are questions that point us toward Jesus' kind of of body and soul medicine. They are questions that will lead toward the kind of healthy community God longs for his creation.

The medical city at Lake Nona will bring new jobs and a much-needed economic boost to Central Florida. Its long-term success, however, will depend on how rooted it will be in God's hope to bring body and soul medicine to a broken world.

For the sake of healthy community, keep asking good questions church!