Christian Nurses and Midwives is one of the newest fellowships in the NCFI family, but it comes from a country which had one of the oldest fellowships. NCF England & Wales was founded in 1942 in the UK, and lasted for 53 years before closing down in 1995. However, to this day NCF Scotland is alive and well, and celebrated its 75th Anniversary in 2007.
But the closure of NCF in England & Wales in 1995 was a major event and shocked many sister fellowships around the world. The reasons were many, and would best be covered elsewhere, but one major factor has been the shift in the UK away from apprentice and practice based nurse training to training in Universities to a higher diploma and graduate level. Nurses who once lived, studied and worked in the same place, now study in one place, live in another, work in a third place, and worship in a fourth. As a result they are more a part of church life than when NCF was set up, but also more overcommitted in their time.
The struggle to engage a new generation of nurses was one of the factors that sadly led the end of NCF, but not for lack of effort. During 1994 they employed a full time development worker to see how they could re-engage with the new generation of nurses, but sadly funding ran out and they concluded that there was no longer a need for an NCF. However, even as they closed down, the hope was expressed in the last edition of their journal that others would come and take up the baton one day.
And indeed, the need for a fellowship had not disappeared. Even though the formal organisation had gone, small groups of nurses continued to meet for prayer and fellowship up and down the country. In addition, the University and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF – part of the IFES movement in the UK) had developed a specialist work among Christian nursing students in Universities across the UK. This movement was known as Christian Student Nurses (CSN), and was supported by a full time staff worker.
Annie Leggett was the CSN staff worker for much of the 1990s, and she realised the absence of a graduates fellowship meant that many students were graduating and struggling without the support of an explicitly nursing focussed Christian fellowship. The training and practice of the profession in the UK was becoming increasingly humanist in its focus, and many of the Christian values and history of nursing were being expunged from the record – leaving Christian nurses increasingly confused and struggling to apply faith to practice. Annie’s successor, Sally-Ann Foster told me some years back of the sense of fear and insecurity about even talking about faith to colleagues (let alone patients) that most Christian nurses felt in the UK – and that this fear was drummed in to them during their training.
CSNM had therefore become vital to help these Christian students become confident in their faith and learn to think about their profession from a Biblical, Christian perspective, and many found the support, fellowship and teaching they received invaluable. But once they graduated they found that the churches did not really offer the same type of support and teaching.
So it was that Annie began to put out announcements at a major UK Bible Week (Word Alive), bringing together groups of Christian nurses from around the UK to meet and pray. In 1997 this meeting began to talk seriously for the first time about the idea of re-establishing a graduate fellowship once again. There was a lot of interest, and a second meeting was held the following year in London at Partnership House (then the headquarters of the Christian Medical Fellowship). A new fellowship was tentatively established, calling itself the “Fellowship of Christian Nurses” (FCN) – the NCF name could not be used again for legal reasons.
In October that year they held their first national conference at St. Andrews Church, Bishopsgate in the City of London. Soon afterwards a prayer group was founded in Bristol by Jane Davies, and in July 1999 a London prayer group was set up – both of these groups remain active to this day. However, from early on it was realised that the emphasis of the new group had to be different – not setting up local or hospital based groups, unless people wanted them, but rather creating a national network with individual membership. A newsletter was launched mailing out to about 350 contacts, and several major churches around the UK were written to for publicity and support for the new fellowship. This early work was spearheaded by Jane Grier, who carried this on until a committee was set up for the graduates’ fellowship.
In June of 2000 the group formally accepted the UCCF statement of faith, the first step towards becoming an affiliated graduate organisation, and thus strengthening and formalising the links with CSN. Peter Swift, who joined the Committee of CNM at that time, reflected to me recently "we were keen to become one of the UCCF ‘Professional Groups’ because we felt that recognition by them was key in establishing our own credibility. So a lot of time and effort went into meeting the UCCF entry requirements - formulating a constitution and adopting the UCCF basis of faith etc. We read several constitutions belonging to other groups and formulated the CNM one.... but it took ages!"
Nevertheless, after much hard work and deliberation on 31 March 2001 the organisation was formally launched at its inaugural Annual General Meeting. The name, Christian Nurses and Midwives, was arrived at after a long debate. Recalling this process Peter said “we did a lot of brain storming before settling on CNM as a name. At one point I advocated a single noun as a name, and suggested ‘Vocation’ but I was out voted! (Actually I still like the idea!)”. The name was chosen to ensure that midwives were included and recognised by the fellowship, and the student fellowship likewise changed its name to Christian Student Nurses and Midwives (CSNM).
By November of that year, there were forty paid up members. Despite the large mailing list and all the churches that had been contacted CNM’s early challenge was the general apathy it found among English and Welsh nurses and churches towards the movement. Nevertheless, membership grew, and by 2003 it stood at 120.
Links with NCFI also began quite early in the life of CNM. Sally-Ann Foster was Annie’s successor as the CSNM student worker as well as being on the Committee of CNM, and in both capacities she attended the 2002 NCFI European Regional Conference in Bergen, Norway. This was a great encouragement for her and both the fellowships, but it was also an encouragement to other European fellowships to know that things were getting going again in England and Wales, and they have been a great source of support and encouragement ever since.
However, 2003 was to be something of a watershed year, and the new fellowship nearly died in its infancy. Among the founding members the pressures of work and family commitments was making it increasingly hard to put in the time and energy that CNM needed to grow, and several had to step down. Several regional day conferences struggled to get going (the Manchester day conference that year had only one attendee!), and then the national conference had to be cancelled as bookings were so low. CNM was funded purely by member subscriptions, but its finances nearly bottomed out as the costs of producing CNM News and underwriting the conferences drained the coffers faster than membership fees could replenish them. Things were looking serious as a remnant committee of just Sally-Ann (who by now had stepped down as the CSNM staff worker) and the treasurer Angela Thavaraj sought to keep the organisation afloat.
Four decisions were taken over the next couple of years that significantly changed the course of events. The first was the decision by what was left of the CNM Committee (now called the Council) to call on the Council of Reference that had been set up to support CNM from its inaugural meeting just two years earlier, and ask if they could be involved in supporting the fellowship more actively through its time of crisis. Two of us joined the Council as a result; Liz Capper, a former Chief Nursing Officer at The Hammersmith Hospital in London agreed to take up the Chairmanship of CNM, and I was invited to get involved as the Secretary/Administrator. I had been involved since early on in CNM, but mainly in the capacity of supporting the missionary aim of CNM, speaking at graduate and CSNM conferences on working overseas and offering support to individual members in this capacity.
The second decision was made by the Executive Committee of the Christian Medical Fellowship, who sponsored three members of CNM to attend the NCFI World Conference in Seoul. CMF had been supportive of CNM since its early years, and had worked closely with the original NCF. It had committed resources to seeing the work among Christian nurses be properly birthed and developed again. As a result, Angela, myself and a new and enthusiastic member, Tim James, agreed to attend the conference, which marked another turning point for CNM. The struggles we faced as a fellowship turned out to be pretty universal, but we also realised we were part of a larger family with a lot to teach us. I was co-opted on to the European Committee, and Tim and Angela were greatly encouraged and enthused with new ideas and vision. A major encouragement for us was to find that fellowships in the Pacific (Papua New Guinea and Fiji) had been praying for a new national nursing fellowship in England & Wales for some time!
A third decision in late 2004 by UCCF not to replace Sally-Ann and to disinvest in its specialist ministry to nursing and midwifery students led to the winding up of CSNM. In March 2005 at its AGM in Shropshire on the borders between England and Wales, CNM formally altered its constitution to welcome student members. Within a few months we had nearly fifty student members.
The final decision was taken by both the CNM Council and the leadership of a sister network for Christians in the allied health professions (Christian Therapists Network or CTN) to hold our conferences jointly. CTN had grown up out of UCCF in almost exactly the same way as CNM, and both were struggling to run a national conference with limited resources. The example of interdisciplinary fellowship and cooperation has helped make these conferences a great success. The joint conferences have run since 2004, and we now regularly have between 100 and 120 people attending. They are one of the high points of our year, although in the last twelve months we have shifted to holding more regional, joint day conferences, and to to hold a residential event once every two years.
Meanwhile the links with NCFI were proving fruitful in new ways. One of the realities facing nurses worldwide is that our skills are in demand wherever we go, and for some time the lack of UK nationals going in to nursing had meant that we were one of the biggest importers of nurses from other nations. Talks with the leaders of FCN in Nigeria and NCF Philippines in Seoul in 2004 and Ede in 2006 led us to build contacts with Christian nurses from both nations living and working in the UK, and the exploration of how we can support those nurses more effectively as a national fellowship. We are still struggling to know how to do this effectively, but FCN’s UK chapter continues to send delegates to CNM events and we have welcomed several Filipina members in recent years – nevertheless there is a great deal more that we need to do.
Tim James set up our student ministry in 2005, establishing a team of student leaders and specialist section of our website. When Tim stepped down from this role in late 2006, Rachael Bowen stepped up to the role of student liaison on the CNM Council – establishing a Facebook social networking group for Christian nursing students. Sadly, the time and energy needed to engage students remains one of our biggest challenges, and we struggle to maintain links and contact with our student members. We are now starting to run a number of conferences around the UK focussing on sharing faith appropriately in the workplace.
Another new development has been the establishment of a new partnership with CMF, and through them the employment of a new staff worker amongst student nurses and midwives in London and the Southeast - picking up the ministry that CSN and CSNM started in the nineties.
CNM has undergone further developments over the last couple of years. In February 2007 at its AGM in Cardiff, Wales, CNM adopted a new constitution formalising its existence as a legal entity, and from June of that year it became a legally registered charitable organisation in England and Wales. This gives legal protection and accountability, and helps raise the standing and credibility of the organisation.
The UK is perhaps unique in NCFI in having two member fellowships – one for Scotland and one for England and Wales. However this is not unusual in the UK, where Scotland has, particularly for the last couple of decades been regaining the status of an independent nation, and many UK charities have a separate Scottish organisation, not least because the charity laws and financial practices are quite different between Scotland and England. We have still to work out how between NCF Scotland and CNM we can support Christian Nurses in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
There are many challenges for the future of CNM. While we have about 200 members now, it is hard to grow the fellowship much more as people are not keen to join organisations and get much of their fellowship (quite rightly) from their local churches. Nevertheless, we have six regional fellowships, links with three or four others that are starting or seeking to re-start, and in all of these the minority of attendees are actually paid up members of CNM. Many of those who are not members regularly attend our national and regional conferences and benefit greatly from the fellowship, which is encouraging as we are reaching out to many more nurses and midwives than our 200 official members. However, this also limits our financial support to sustain this outreach. And we continue to face the challenge of engaging with and remaining in contact with students.
As Sally-Ann reflected to me very recently, “The hardest thing about trying to get CNM set up - amazingly in the current technological era - was networking, and trying to contact people and get them to catch the vision. CMF has been brilliantly supportive from the start, but Churches from whom we'd hoped to have more support are understandably preoccupied with their own programmes, and were unwilling to really partner [with] us in trying to encourage nurses to get local groups off the ground. We found that if we had an established work to sell, people would have been more inclined to join us or come along side us. However the real struggle has been getting people with time and vision to join us in trying to get the work up and running.”
We are also in an increasingly post-Christian society in the UK, where it is ever more difficult to stand up publicly for the Christian faith in the face of an increasingly militant and officially sanctioned secularism. Changes in employment law, religious hatred legislation, increasing liberalisation of laws in areas from abortion and euthanasia to other contentious areas of bio-ethics make practicing with professional and Christian integrity increasingly hard. The need for active support for Christian nurses and midwives is, if anything greater than it was when NCF was set up in 1942, but the issues and environment in which we work are changing beyond recognition.
However, we serve a God who is far greater than all these challenges, and we are reminded of the words of Jesus in John’s Gospel “in this Godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I have conquered the world” (John 16: 33 – The Message)
Steven Fouch
CNM Secretary
CNM Secretary
