Clergy Educational Event
Leading Causes of Life: A Framework for Clergy Partnership, with Gary Gunderson
Thursday, August 25, 9 am
Hubbard Learning Center, Sticht Center, Wake Forest Baptist Health
The conversation will focus on the vital role clergy have in healing in their congregations and communities. Gary will share about the importance of the leading causes of life (hope, agency, connection, coherence, and blessing/intergenerativity). Light refreshements will be offered.
Rev. Dr Gary Gunderson is Professor of the Health of the Public in the Wake Forest University School of Divinity and Professor of Public Health Science in School of Medicine. He serves as Vice President for FaithHealth at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center which includes spiritual care, Clinical Pastoral Education and counseling centers in 32 locations across North Carolina as well as guiding community health strategy for the 19-county service area.
He is known for more than two decades of creative work in the field of faith and public health initially at The Carter Center and Emory School of Public Health and then in Memphis where the ideas found ground through more than 530 congregational partners showing hard evidence of significant improved outcomes including mortality, cost and dramatically lower hospitalization. The Division is developing partnerships with hundreds of congregations through FaithHealthNC adapting this broad body of experience into this very different social and faith environment.
Gunderson has authored four books including Deeply Woven Roots and The Leading Causes of Life. He is secretary of Stakeholder Health, a learning group of more than 40 healthcare systems convened in collaboration with the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services exploring how faith-based organizations can more powerfully fulfill their founding mission to the poor.
He is an ordained American Baptist minister with degrees from Candler School of Theology at Emory University and Doctor of Ministry at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.
You can read a Q & A with Gary Gunderson on Leading Causes of Life HERE.
