Why wouldn't this work?
am I missing something?
<div class="col-70">
{exp:channel:entries channel="ministries" limit="1" {gv_param_disable_default}}
<h1 class="section-header">{title}</h1>
<p>
<img class="{switch='drop-shadow body-image-right|drop-shadow body-image-left'}" src="{image}" alt="{image_description}" title="{image_description}" width="350"/>
{page_content}
</p>
{/exp:channel:entries}
</div>
Update:
Come to find out, the switch does work fine though, I didn't realize it's intended use. It doesn't switch every page load or between each entry on separate pages rather, it switches through the iteration (or loop if you will) of entries when you have more than one entry being listed on a page via a single channel entry tag pair.
A good example of how one might use the switch variable and classes would be Zebra Tables where you are switching between a darker and lighter color for each table row.