News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: May 14, 2009
For more information, contact Virginia Elliott, Vice President for Programs, 620-662-8586

Health Fund announces grant to Chapel Hill United Methodist Church

Hutchinson, KS—Chapel Hill United Methodist Church, Wichita, has been awarded a $3,300 Healthy Congregations grant from the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund to help establish a healing ministry to serve the congregation and surrounding community. Grant funding will be used to provide educational and other health ministry resources. The grant project director is Betty Leader, and the pastor of Chapel Hill UMC is the Rev. Jeff Gannon.

The Health Fund's Healthy Congregations Grants program provided start-up grants of up to $5,000 to Kansas United Methodist churches to stimulate the development of comprehensive congregational health and wellness ministries. The Healthy Congregations Grants program, which concluded in December 2008, has been superseded by the new Healthy Congregations Covenant program. The Covenant program represents the Health Fund's enthusiastic reaffirmation of its health partnership with local United Methodist churches across the state.

Based in Hutchinson, the mission of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund is “Healthy Kansans through cooperative and strategic philanthropy guided by Christian principles.”  Its funding comes from an endowment established in 1986 by the Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church from a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Wesley Hospital in Wichita.  Since the Health Fund’s founding, grants totaling more than $50 million have supported hundreds of health-related projects in Kansas.

# # #