Saturday, September 13, 1997

Baptists' eating, exercise habits are a cause for concern

By Jeffrey Weiss

The Dallas Morning News

Southern Baptist pastors need to focus on physical fitness as they labor for spiritual salvation.

That's the word from a new committee within the Southern Baptist Convention that collected some disturbing data at the group's national gathering in Dallas this summer.

The numbers came out of a exhibit hall booth that attracted about 1,000 people, each of whom filled out a short survey about his or her health habits and had a blood pressure test.

The study was not scientific because the participants weren't randomly selected. Most were pastors and their families who had the time to fill out the survey.

But the sample was large enough to suggest trends to convention officials regarding health habits within the denomination.

Some results were encouraging: No reports of alcohol abuse, almost no reports of tobacco use.

But, by the standards of modern medicine, most of the other numbers were red flags. Most of those surveyed were heavier and more sedentary than the national average - an average which itself is not exactly a gold standard for healthy living.

About half didn't eat breakfast daily. Almost a third weren't getting enough sleep. A third had high blood pressure - and half of them weren't on medication for their condition. Of those who had ever had their cholesterol tested, half reported it was high. And 40 percent of those surveyed admitted to eating junk food at least once a day.

"We eat Southern cooking. That's the way we were raised," said Ray Furr. "There are not many pieces of meat that we don't eat fried."

Furr works for the Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the agency that supplies health and life insurance for about half of the Southern Baptist ministers and their families. He's also a personal fitness trainer. And he's on the committee created by Southern Baptist officials to develop strategies to improve the health of denomination members.

The effort will focus first on pastors and their families. That's partly because Southern Baptist ministers are under an unusual amount of stress and need the help, conference officials say. And it's partly because - just as ministers should try to be spiritual examples for their congregations - they should offer a physical model as well, said Tommy Yessick, director of the personal development section of the Sunday School Board.

Yessick has undergraduate and graduate degrees in physical education and recreation. And he has a master's degree in religious education.

He was the spark behind the decision to focus on the physical health of the pastors and their families.

"Some ministers have the impression that 'I'm doing God's work and he's going to take care of me,' " Yessick said. "Well, he is. But you can't ignore the natural processes."

Processes such as, if you eat too many fatty foods and don't exercise, you're more likely to have heart disease, diabetes, fatigue and a constellation of other health problems.

Ignoring biomedical reality, Yessick said, is wrong from a spiritual and a physical perspective. He uses biblical verses to make his point.

Consider 3 John 2: "I wish beyond all things that you may prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers."

Or 1 Thessalonians 5:23: "The very God of peace sanctify you wholly."

"Wholly" includes the physical, Yessick said. And if God has sanctified it, we should treat it accordingly.

Part of the problem is simple ignorance, Furr said. He has people tell him they eat healthy - plenty of green vegetables, fish and chicken. But the greens are cooked with plenty of bacon and the chicken and fish are fried, he said.

So while on the one hand, Southern Baptist ministers and their families are avoiding the high-risk factors of tobacco and alcohol, their other habits mean "we tend to live longer and sicker," Furr said.

And the condition of the folks in the pews may be even worse than the people in the pulpit, he said.

"More likely you'll find a lot more congregational members using tobacco and drinking," he said.

Yessick works with PastorCare, a program under the Sunday School Board. PastorCare is setting up a survey to find out what the pastors think is their most important health problem: Inactivity or poor nutrition? Weight or blood pressure? Stress management or finding a balance between the demands of church and home?

The goal is to design an education program that the pastors will want to follow, with effects that will eventually be felt in the congregations as trimmer, healthier ministers preach a message of healthy living along with the gospel.

"Christian people ought to be leading the way in living healthy," Furr said.

"It's extremely difficult for me to listen to a minister who is obviously physically out of condition," he said. "It's like a doctor who smokes."

(c) 1997, The Dallas Morning News.

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