Community Church of Columbus is one of 80 churches nationwide selected to take part in WHOLE 4, a new health and wellness series developed by psychologist Daniel Amen and his Amen Clinic.
As part of the church’s Tuesday Connection support groups, the church will be offering the first of 12 sessions from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, open to the community.
A free meal will be served before the session from 5:30 to 6:15 p.m. Registration is free and can be found at cccolumbus.org and by clicking Tuesday Connection events.
The sessions will be facilitated by Johnathan Isbill, an MS registered dietitian, and licensed mental health counselor Dana Bowling. According to Isbill, the program was developed by Amen, a world-renowned psychiatrist and person of faith. He built the program around inspiring holistic transformation across four areas of life, which are the brain and body, the mind, relationships and spirit.
“So how do we reconnect to God’s purpose for our life, how do we honor God with our health and wellness habits, like how do we actually think about our health and wellness as an act of worship to our creator?,” Isbill said. “How do we renew our thinking and focus on God’s truth and in comparison to what the world would suggest or what a daily life is like in America, and then last how do we strengthen our connections with love and grace in our communities and in those relationships?”
The first session will focus on building relationships and having attendees connect outside of WHOLE 4, Isbill said. They will also establish accountability partners to ensure that attendees have spent time outside of the group praying, meditating or journaling, and watch an educational video produced by Amen.
“A lot of the objective is going to be improving the education that people have around health and wellness in general and then activating more of these healthier habits in their brain and their body, in their mind, so actual psychological strategies and tips and tools, and then spiritual practices as well,” Isbill said.
Future sessions will continue to strengthen and reinforce the lessons and applying those in everyday lives. The idea is that over the course of the program, everyone will learn more about different variables in their health and wellness, which they will spend dedicated weeks strengthening and reinforcing those aspects, Isbill said.
From the program, he hopes that people don’t feel alone anymore and that they have a safe place and community to help them grow, nurture and support their health and wellness.
Isbill believes Community Church of Columbus was selected for the pilot program because of the church’s longstanding history of running programs through the Tuesday Connection support groups.
“… I’m also just very passionate about faith-based perspectives on health and wellness and one of the reasons why I love this program is because we don’t really talk about that as much as what I feel like we could,” Isbill said.
