The Rev. Mark Milwee came to Gilroy in January of 1999 as pastor
of the First Baptist Church. While performing his many pastoral
duties, he has been engaged in an additional task: completing the
requirements for a Doctor of Ministry degree at Golden Gate
Seminary in Mill Valley.
The Rev. Mark Milwee came to Gilroy in January of 1999 as pastor of the First Baptist Church. While performing his many pastoral duties, he has been engaged in an additional task: completing the requirements for a Doctor of Ministry degree at Golden Gate Seminary in Mill Valley.
While many doctorates are specifically academic and often on obscure topics, Milwee describes his as being focused on “practical ministry;” enabling him to grow as a minister and a person.
When Pastor Milwee served congregations in the East Bay, he volunteered as a chaplain at Mt. Diablo and Washington hospitals.
But when he came to Gilroy, he found that the local hospital (at that time, South Valley) didn’t have a similar program.
Thus was born the idea for his project. But after getting it approved by the hospital’s management and his seminary advisor, the hospital was sold to Catholic Healthcare West, which put everything on hold for about a year.
Milwee eventually approached Saint Louise Regional Hospital with his idea again and found Sister Paula Baker, director of mission services, very supportive. Despite being a Roman Catholic institution with a pastoral care system in place for Catholics, the hospital wishes to minister to the spiritual needs of all patients.
Milwee drafted a covenant agreement between himself and the hospital, defining duties for each party: While he promised to recruit and train volunteer Protestant chaplains, Saint Louise agreed to provide official identification, TB testing, and other services.
The hospital requires that all participants be fully ordained and endorsed by their denominations, pass an interview with Milwee and Sister Paula and observe requirements of confidentiality and non-proselytism.
Recruiting clergy was not easy: many couldn’t spare the time from their ministries or didn’t feel a calling to participate. The six who volunteered are the Reverends Allison Berry, Gilroy United Methodist Church; Ron Koch, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church; Drake and Grace Fern, Family Worship Center; Michelle Nylander, Church of the Rock, and, of course, Milwee himself.
Each member of this corps commits to being on-call for one week on a rotating basis, coming in in a timely manner if a patient requests a Protestant chaplain and visiting the hospital at least three times a week to provide a pastoral presence for patients and staff.
Milwee has found this to be a rewarding experience, seeing it as an “extension of my ministry. Most of the time I’m with people from my own church; this gives me an opportunity to help people I’d never meet otherwise.”
“Developing and Implementing a Volunteer Chaplaincy Program at Saint Louise Regional Hospital,” Milwee’s thesis, is a thorough explanation of the program, including a good deal of research on the role of religious faith in healing and the significant role chaplains can play in hospitals, plus forms and documents used in the program.
One of the requirements of his seminary is that these projects must be repeatable, so the information found in this thesis insures a similar program could be replicated nearly anywhere in the country.
Dr. Milwee emphasizes that more volunteer chaplains are needed and urges clergy in South Santa Clara County to call him at 847-6000 if they would like to learn more about serving the community in this way.
Anyone is invited to an Open House Reception celebrating Dr. Milwee’s graduation on May 30 from 1 to 4 p.m. at First Baptist Church, 8455 Wren Avenue, Gilroy.
