Category: Resources

“…not merely a doctor”

“The doctor has so objectified himself that he never faces up to himself and his own life at all.”

“Somewhere in Pembrokshire a tombstone is said to bear the inscription, ‘John Jones, born a man, died a grocer.’ There are many whom I have had the privilege of meeting whose tombstone might well bear the grim epitath: ‘…. born a man, died a doctor’! The greatest danger which confronts the medical man is that he may become lost in his profession.”

D Martyn Lloyd Jones, in “Healing and the Scriptures.”

Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones was a brilliant British physician and an outstanding preacher, and offers great medical wisdom and spiritual insight. This book was published in 1982 but still contains “a masterful view of the Christian physician’s calling, and of the dimensions of ministry to the whole man.” (Quote from J.I.Packer).

How often our identity is tied up with being medical professionals. Lloyd Jones challenges us to view success not merely as the accumulation of medical knowlege, reputatation and material wealth, but fruitfulness for Christ and His kingdom. The foundation of our identity must be in God, not ourselves; we are creatures made in the image of God and created for fellowship with God — all of which is only possible through the salvation obtained by Jesus at the cross.

Dr. Lloyd Jones says to us, “I beseech you not to allow the profession to make you forget yourself, that you are a man, and not merely a doctor.”  And to bring the vocabulary in the 21st century, we’d say, “you are a man or a woman, not merely a doctor!”

Zeal without Burnout: Seven keys to a lifelong ministry of sustainable sacrifice

Quotes from this helpful little book by Christopher Ash and Alistair Begg:

  • “God so often allows his ministers to come to an end of themselves in order that they might begin to be more useful to his service.
  • And it is worth remembering that none of us thinks we are on the path to burnout until we are nearly burnt out; it is precisely those of us who are sure we are safe, who are most in danger. we need to heed Paul’s warning: so, if you think you are standing firm, be careful you don’t fall!
  • The problem is that we do not sacrifice alone. It may sound heroic, even romantic, to burn out for Jesus. The reality is that others are implicated in our crashes.
  • Perhaps the expression, “sustainable sacrifice” gets to the heart of the idea — the sort of self-giving that God enables us to go on giving day after day.
  • The trouble with being strong and healthy is that you and I begin to believe that we are something other than dust into which God has temporarily breathed the breath of life. Because I can walk, think, talk and act, I begin to believe that I am immortal — and that I will always be able to walk, think, talk and act. But I won’t.
  • Good sleep is a gracious gift of God.
  • The sleepless nights were caused by an addiction to adrenalin that was beginning to have a negative effect in other ways —
  • “We doctors in the treatment of nervous diseases, are compelled to provide periods of rest. Some of these periods are, I think, only Sundays in arrears.” Sir James Brown, The Times, 30 April 1991
  • God needs no day off. But I am not God, and I do.
  • Most people crack up because they try to do what God never intended them to do. They destroy themselves by sinful ambition, just as much as the drunkard and the drug addict. Ambition drives them on.
  • Some of us in a world of social media have a great many Facebook friends, but very few, if any, deep friendships.
  • Think about the kinds of things that drain you and the sorts of things that energize you. Try, so far as it lies in your power, to put in the diary sufficient of the things that energize you to keep you emotional, physical, intellectual, relational batteries topped up.
  • To neglect sleep, Sabbaths, friendships and inward renewal is not heroism but hubris. It is to claim that I am a level or two above normal members of the human race.
  • Gospel ministry is ministry in a messed up world. And there is grace in the disruption, for it humbles me. it shows me afresh my total dependence on God.
  • If joy is to motivate us to gospel work, then joy must be rooted in something outside the fruits of our work, something that cannot be touched by the vagaries and frustrations of this life under the sun.

How to prepare medical missionaries — part 2

Here were the resources suggested in our survey of current health workers in SIM. I’ve arranged them by topic: community health and health education; leadership and management; theology of work and mission; and tropical and international medical courses.

Community health and health education:

http://www.chenetwork.org/     Global CHE network – Community health education/evangelism

http://www.hifa2015.org/     Meeting the information needs of nurses and midwives – looks like quite a good site!

http://www.talcuk.org/shop.htm     Teaching aids at low cost at TALC, including “Where there is No Doctor”

http://www.thewhpca.org/resources/palliative-care-toolkit     Palliative care toolkit (example)

www.digitalhealthlibrary.net     Digital African Health Library, providing clinical decision support on mobile devices in Africa (includes DynaMed, Oxford Handbooks, medical calculators, etc. Only downloadable for those living in Africa.  Costs about US$45 per year.  Search app (IOS or android) “Digital African Health Library”

Leadership and management in healthcare missions:

www.TECHmd.org     Technical and equipment issues

http://managementhelp.org/     Excellent management library of resources and training ; check out their free “eMBA”! Can help in the areas of strategic planning, financial accountability, management of non-profit(mission) staff, etc.  Extensive library online; easy to use. Not a “Christian” library per se but very helpful for these kinds of questions.

http://www.cmf.org.uk/international/hsp/     Here is a pretty complete list of mission hospitals, agencies, national association, training programs and other resources!

https://cmda.org/bookstore/product/beyond-medicine     “Beyond Medicine: What Else you need to know to become a healthcare missionary.” Written by CMDA Director David Stevens.

Theology of work and mission

Connecting your work to God’s work: Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller

How to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor: When Helping Hurts (Corbett); avoiding paternalism

“What is the Mission of the Church?”  DeYoung

“Preach and heal” by Fielding. Very good at some points; somewhat anti-institutional.

Sharing our faith in practical ways as medical professionals; training designed for an international context; saline process

Tropical and international medical courses:

http://intermed.org.au/   Graduate diploma in International health and development in Australia

http://medicine.hsc.wvu.edu/tropmed/tropical-medicine-course/     West Virginia tropical medicine course

http://www.equipinternational.org/who-are-you     Equip courses for physicians and medical practitioners (and some non professionals too!)

http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/study/cpd/stmh.html     Diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene (3 months in London)

http://wrair-www.army.mil/OtherServices_TropicalMedicine.aspx     3- and 5-day “Operational Clinical Infectious Disease Courses” at Walter Reed Army Institute

http://www.inmed.us/     The mission of the Institute for International Medicine is to equip healthcare professionals and students with the unique skills to serve forgotten people.

Also highlighted by most:

CMDA CMDE Continuing education conferences every year in either Greece or Thailand.

What is your experience?

"Every Good Endeavor"

“Christians’ disengagement from popular culture usually carries over into dualism at work. “Dualism” is a term used to describe a separating wall between the sacred and the secular. it is a direct result of a thin view of sin, common grace, and God’s providential purposes.

“Dualism leads some to think that if their work is to please Christ, it must be done overtly in his name. They feel they have to write and perform art that explicitly mentions Jesus, or teach religious subjects in a Christian school; or that they must work in an organization in which all people are professing Christians. Or they must let everyone know that they lead Bible studies in the office in the morning before work hours. This kind of dualism comes both from a failure to see the panoramic scope of common grace and the subtle depths of human sin.  People with this view cannot see that work done by non-Christians always contains some degree of God’s common grace as well as the distortions of sin. And they cannot see that work done by Christians, even if it overtly names the name of Jesus, is also significantly distorted by sin.

“The opposite dualistic approach, however, is even more prevalent — and based on our experience, even more difficult to dismantle. In this approach, Christians think of themselves as Christians only within church activity. Their Christian life is what they do on Sundays and weeknights, when they engage in spiritual activities The rest of the week they have no ability to think circumspectly about the underlying values they are consuming and living out. In their life and work “out in the world,” they uncritically accept and reenact all of their culture’s underlying values and idolatries of self, surface appearances, technique, personal freedom, materialism, and other features of expressive individualism. While the first form of dualism fails to grasp the importance of what we have in common with the world, this form fails to grasp the importance of what is distinctive about the Christian worldview — namely, that the gospel reframes all things, not just religious things.

“The integration of faith and work is the opposite of dualism. We should be willing to be very engaged with the cultural and vocational worlds of non-Christians. Our thick view of sin will remind us that even explicitly Christian work and culture will always have some idolatrous discourse within it. Our thick view of common grace will remind us that even explicitly non-Christian work and culture will always have some witness to God’s truth in it. Because Christians are never as good as their right beliefs should make them, we will adopt a stance of critical enjoyment of human culture and its expressions in every field of work. We will learn to recognize the half-truths and resist the idols; and we will learn to recognize and celebrate the glimpses of justice, wisdom, truth, and beauty we find around us in all aspects of life. Ultimately, a grasp of the gospel and of biblical teaching on cultural engagement should lead Christians to be the most appreciative of the hand of God behind the work of our colleagues and neighbors.”

"Every Good Endeavor"

“Christians’ disengagement from popular culture usually carries over into dualism at work. “Dualism” is a term used to describe a separating wall between the sacred and the secular. it is a direct result of a thin view of sin, common grace, and God’s providential purposes.

“Dualism leads some to think that if their work is to please Christ, it must be done overtly in his name. They feel they have to write and perform art that explicitly mentions Jesus, or teach religious subjects in a Christian school; or that they must work in an organization in which all people are professing Christians. Or they must let everyone know that they lead Bible studies in the office in the morning before work hours. This kind of dualism comes both from a failure to see the panoramic scope of common grace and the subtle depths of human sin.  People with this view cannot see that work done by non-Christians always contains some degree of God’s common grace as well as the distortions of sin. And they cannot see that work done by Christians, even if it overtly names the name of Jesus, is also significantly distorted by sin.

“The opposite dualistic approach, however, is even more prevalent — and based on our experience, even more difficult to dismantle. In this approach, Christians think of themselves as Christians only within church activity. Their Christian life is what they do on Sundays and weeknights, when they engage in spiritual activities The rest of the week they have no ability to think circumspectly about the underlying values they are consuming and living out. In their life and work “out in the world,” they uncritically accept and reenact all of their culture’s underlying values and idolatries of self, surface appearances, technique, personal freedom, materialism, and other features of expressive individualism. While the first form of dualism fails to grasp the importance of what we have in common with the world, this form fails to grasp the importance of what is distinctive about the Christian worldview — namely, that the gospel reframes all things, not just religious things.

“The integration of faith and work is the opposite of dualism. We should be willing to be very engaged with the cultural and vocational worlds of non-Christians. Our thick view of sin will remind us that even explicitly Christian work and culture will always have some idolatrous discourse within it. Our thick view of common grace will remind us that even explicitly non-Christian work and culture will always have some witness to God’s truth in it. Because Christians are never as good as their right beliefs should make them, we will adopt a stance of critical enjoyment of human culture and its expressions in every field of work. We will learn to recognize the half-truths and resist the idols; and we will learn to recognize and celebrate the glimpses of justice, wisdom, truth, and beauty we find around us in all aspects of life. Ultimately, a grasp of the gospel and of biblical teaching on cultural engagement should lead Christians to be the most appreciative of the hand of God behind the work of our colleagues and neighbors.”

The Cape Town Commitment of faith and call to action – – the mission of God

Cape Town Commitment

Here is a rich description of the mission which God calls us to as believers, expressed in the words of the Lausanne commitment at Cape Town, South Africa

This is section 10 of that commitment word for word. It is an exciting and joyous mission. How are you involved?

We love the mission of God

We are committed to world mission, because it is central to our understanding of God, the Bible, the Church, human history and the ultimate future. The whole Bible reveals the mission of God to bring all things in heaven and earth into unity under Christ, reconciling them through the blood of his cross. In fulfilling his mission, God will transform the creation broken by sin and evil into the new creation in which there is no more sin or curse. God will fulfil his promise to Abraham to bless all nations on the earth, through the gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the seed of Abraham. God will transform the fractured world of nations that are scattered under the judgment of God into the new humanity that will be redeemed by the blood of Christ from every tribe, nation, people and language, and will be gathered to worship our God and Saviour. God will destroy the reign of death, corruption and violence when Christ returns to establish his eternal reign of life, justice and peace. Then God, Immanuel, will dwell with us, and the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign for ever and ever.[53]

A) Our participation in God’s mission. God calls his people to share his mission. The Church from all nations stands in continuity through the Messiah Jesus with God’s people in the Old Testament. With them we have been called through Abraham and commissioned to be a blessing and a light to the nations. With them, we are to be shaped and taught through the law and the prophets to be a community of holiness, compassion and justice in a world of sin and suffering. We have been redeemed through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and empowered by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to what God has done in Christ. The Church exists to worship and glorify God for all eternity and to participate in the transforming mission of God within history. Our mission is wholly derived from God’s mission, addresses the whole of God’s creation, and is grounded at its centre in the redeeming victory of the cross. This is the people to whom we belong, whose faith we confess and whose mission we share.

B) The integrity of our mission. The source of all our mission is what God has done in Christ for the redemption of the whole world, as revealed in the Bible. Our evangelistic task is to make that good news known to all nations. The context of all our mission is the world in which we live, the world of sin, suffering, injustice, and creational disorder, into which God sends us to love and serve for Christ’s sake. All our mission must therefore reflect the integration of evangelism and committed engagement in the world, both being ordered and driven by the whole biblical revelation of the gospel of God.

‘Evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God…The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his Church and responsible service in the world… We affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and humankind, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ…The salvation we proclaim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead.’[54]

‘Integral mission is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. If we ignore the world, we betray the Word of God which sends us out to serve the world. If we ignore the Word of God, we have nothing to bring to the world.’[55]

We commit ourselves to the integral and dynamic exercise of all dimensions of mission to which God calls his Church.

God commands us to make known to all nations the truth of God’s revelation and the gospel of God’s saving grace through Jesus Christ, calling all people to repentance, faith, baptism and obedient discipleship.
God commands us to reflect his own character through compassionate care for the needy, and to demonstrate the values and the power of the kingdom of God in striving for justice and peace and in caring for God’s creation.
In response to God’s boundless love for us in Christ, and out of our overflowing love for him, we rededicate ourselves, with the help of the Holy Spirit, fully to obey all that God commands, with self-denying humility, joy and courage. We renew this covenant with the Lord – the Lord we love because he first loved us.

 

Christian Social Responsibility as described in the Lausanne Covenant

Lausanne Movement

I think the Lausanne statement on Christian Social Responsibility is a helpful framework for our response to the brokenhearted of the world, and I commend it to you, along with the commentary by John Stott produced below.  Medical missions is an expression of our beliefs about God and man.  We must not just care for those in need, but do it out of the right motivation — a sound biblical framework. The Lausanne Movement helps us, and helps those we serve.

Lausanne Covenant Section 5. Christian Social Responsibility

We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all people. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic dignity because of which he or she should be respected and served, not exploited. Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. Although reconciliation with other people is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. For both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ. The message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination, and we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist. When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. The salvation we claim should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. Faith without works is dead. The Lausanne Covenant (Acts 17:26,31; Gen. 18:25; Isa. 1:17; Psa. 45:7; Gen. 1:26,27; Jas. 3:9; Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27,35; Jas. 2:14-26; Joh. 3:3,5; Matt. 5:20; 6:33; II Cor. 3:18; Jas. 2:20)

In the past, especially perhaps in nineteenth century Britain, evangelical Christians had an outstanding record of social action. In this century, however—partly because of our reaction against the “social gospel” of liberal optimism—we have tended to divorce evangelism from social concern. and to concentrate almost exclusively on the former. It may be helpful, therefore, to begin this exposition of section 5 with a reference to two sentences, one of confession and the other of affirmation, which occur about halfway through it.

First, we express penitence both for our neglect of our Christian social responsibility and for our naive polarization in having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. This confession is mildly worded. A large group at Lausanne, concerned to develop a radical Christian discipleship, expressed themselves more strongly, “We must repudiate as demonic the attempt to drive a wedge between evangelism and social action.” Secondly, and positively, we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty. More will be said about this phrase later.

Christian duty arises from Christian doctrine. So this section is not content merely to assert that Christians have social responsibilities: it goes on to outline the four main doctrines out of which our Christian social duty springs, namely the doctrines of God, man, salvation and the kingdom.

A. The Doctrine of God

It is significant that a paragraph which relates entirely to “Christian social responsibility” should open with an affirmation about God. This is right. For our theology must always govern our conduct. We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. Thus the creation and the judgment, the beginning and the end of time, are brought together (cf., Acts 17:26,31). Both concern all men, for God is not just interested in the church but in the world. He created all men, and all men will have to give an account to him on the day of judgment. Therefore (notice the deduction which is drawn from the universality of creation and judgment) we who claim to be God’s people should share the breadth of God’s concerns. In particular, we should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men from every kind of oppression (see Amos 1 and 2). Justice, reconciliation and freedom—these are more and more the object of human quest in today’s world. But they were God’s will for society long before they became man’s quest. For God loves the good and hates the evil wherever these are found (Psa. 7:9,11; 11:4-7; 33:5). It is written of his King in the Old Testament and applied to the Lord Jesus in the New, “You love righteousness and hate wickedness” (Psa. 45 :7; Heb. 1 :9). The same should be true of us all. “Cease to do evil, ” God says, “learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow” (Isa. 1:16,17).

B. The Doctrine of Man

Social responsibility and evangelism are together part of our Christian duty, for both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of God and man. Particular reference is made to the great biblical affirmation that mankind is made in the image of God (Gen. I :26,27). It is for this reason that man is unique on earth. There is a similarity between men and animals in that both are God’s living creatures dependent on him for their being, but a vast dissimilarity in that man alone is a godlike being with such godlike capacities as rationality, conscience, dominion and love. It is the divine image in man which gives him an intrinsic dignity or worth, a worth which belongs to all human beings by creation, regardless of race, religion, color, culture, class sex or age. Because of every person’s inherent dignity as a godlike being, he should be respected and served, and indeed loved (Lev. 19:18; Luke 6:27,35), not exploited. Only when we grasp this foundational biblical doctrine shall we begin to see the evils, for example, of racial discrimination and social prejudice. They are an offense to human dignity and therefore to the God in whose image man is made. It is not exaggerated to say that to insult man in these ways is to blaspheme God (Jas. 3:9,10). Similarly, the reason why murder is such a terrible crime is that “God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:5,6).

C. The Doctrine of Salvation

Salvation for many people today is a prohibited word: some are embarrassed by it, others say it is meaningless. Certainly it needs to be interpreted for modern men. So there was a good expectation that the Assembly of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism at Bangkok in January 1973 entitled Salvation Today would produce a fresh definition, faithful to Scripture and relevant to today. But Bangkok disappointed us. Although it included some references to personal salvation, its emphasis was to equate salvation with political and economic liberation. The Lausanne Covenant rejects this, for it is not biblical. Reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation. Nevertheless, it is our duty to be involved in socio-political action; that is, both in social action (caring for society’s casualties) and in political action (concerned for the structures of society itself). For both active evangelistic and social involvement are necessary expressions not only of our doctrines of God and man (as we have seen) but also of our love for our neighbor and our obedience to Jesus Christ. Further, although salvation is not to be equated with political liberation, yet the message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination. Salvation is deliverance from evil, and implicit in God’s desire to save people from evil is his judgment on the evil from which he saves them. Moreover, this evil is both individual and social. Since God hates evil and injustice, we should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice wherever they exist.

D. The Doctrine of the Kingdom

Section five ends with a challenge to our personal Christian commitment. Christians claim to have received Christ. But do we always remember that when people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom (John I: 12,13, 3:3,5)? To be a citizen of God’s kingdom is to be submissive to his righteous rule. As such, we are under obligation to exhibit the righteous standards of the kingdom in our own lives. For Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that members of his kingdom must “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and exhibit a righteousness which exceeds the shallow, formal righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 5:6,20). He also said that we must “seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness” (Matt. 6:33); that is, we must set these things before us as the supreme good to which we devote our lives. We must seek not only the spread of the kingdom itself, nor only to exhibit its righteousness ourselves, but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world. How else can we be “the salt of the earth” (Matt. 5:14)?

The last sentences of this section revert to the terminology of salvation, but we must remember that Jesus drew no distinction between salvation and the kingdom of God (e.g., Mark 10:23-27 and cf., Isa. 52:7). The salvation we claim (and Christians do humbly claim to have been saved) should be transforming us. “Be transformed,” Paul commanded the Romans. “We are being transformed,” he declared to the Corinthians, using the same Greek verb (Rom. 12:2; II Cor. 3:18). And this transformation, if genuine, should touch every part of us, indeed the totality of our personal and social responsibilities. If not, how can we claim to be saved? For faith without works is dead (Jas. 2:20).

Questions for study:

The Covenant relates duty to doctrine. Take the biblical doctrine of either God or man, and think out what effect it should have on our social responsibilities.
If your local church takes its social responsibility seriously, how will this affect its program?
“We should not be afraid to denounce evil and injustice…” Discuss the implications of this statement.
What has salvation got to do with social action?

The Work of the New York Medical Missionary Society

I was recently at a meeting where the idea of a medical missions institute was proposed, in order to enable our healthcare missionaries to better flourish in their international settings.  In fact over 65 different agencies send out missionaries from America; if we add Canadians, Indians, Australians, Nigerians, British, South Africans, etc the number of mission agencies involved in cross cultural medicine is significant. I wonder if the time has come to begin to think again about how to better link hands together for the sake of Christ, showing the compassion of Christ to those who are suffering and speaking the words of Christ to bring salvation. The future for medical missions does certainly not depend on just American solutions.

We think we understand what is happening in our world, but a look back in history shows that we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

I have been researching the history of SIM’s response to human needs since our inception in 1893, and so I’m attuned just now to history. I discovered Christoffer H Grundmann, who is a Professor of Religion and the Healing Arts at Valparaiso University, in Indiana.  In the Christian Journal for Global Health he quotes Gordon Dowkontt as writing in the Medical Missionary Record (1897), “To merely talk piously and tell suffering people of a future state, while neglecting to relieve their present needs, when in our power to do so, must be nauseating both to God and man, and certainly is a libel upon the Christianity Christ both taught and practiced, in which He combined care for the whole being of man, body and soul.” He was trying to correct a distortion of Scripture which emphasized the spiritual apart from the physical. The Scriptures shows that Christ cares for both; the root foundation for it all is His work on the cross.

In fact Rev. Roland Bingham, the founder of the Sudan Interior Mission (now SIM), warned against the dangers of a gospel which was so spiritual that it did not allow for God to use physical means (doctors, drugs, procedures, etc) for healing.

However even before the Sudan Interior Mission was founded in 1893 (by an amazing group of three men who went out to reach interior of Nigeria – another story), there were groups of men and women writing and preparing for medical missions!  And we think we are on the cutting edge!

In a Google search for Dr. Dowkontt’s article, I found a Wikipedia article entitled “American Medical Missionary College.”  I would like to include a few paragraphs describing the New York Missionary Society, founded in 1881. If you follow the link you can also read an online autobiography by Dr. Dowkontt in ‘external links.’ Dr. Dowkontt ‘pleads the cause of the specially educated medical missionary.‘  Note that during that era of colonialism and “Christendom,” the unreached of the world were often referred to by words which sound paternalistic (or downright racist) to our ears. I wonder if we could take the passion of this missionary society and work towards a future when East and West, North and South can work together to heal the brokenhearted of the world. Maybe a similar medical missionary society – or a network of them around the world – could be used by the Lord to work towards this end, out of the compassion of Christ.

“THE WORK OF THE NEW YORK MEDICAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY.

“We have received a courteous letter from Dr. George D. Dowkontt, of this city, Medical Superintendent of the New York Medical Missionary “Home and Institute,” regarding the subject of “specially trained medical missionaries,” to which we referred in our issue of March 6. Dr. Dowkontt pleads the cause of the specially educated medical missionary. The great need of medical and surgical aid in heathen lands, and the great missionary value of such aid, are referred to, while the scarcity of men both willing and fitted to go is insisted upon. It was for these reasons that the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society was founded in 1841, and the New York Medical Missionary Society in 1881. The peculiar need for the existence of the latter society, we are told, lies in the fact that medical missionaries must be particularly well educated medically, and American medical colleges are not good enough, and do not furnish sufficient training. Our correspondent adds:

” ‘Allow me to say, in conclusion, that there is great force in the suggestion you made, that we could well spare two thousand out of the four thousand physicians annually graduated in America; and this is forcibly shown in the fact that while in 1880 there was one doctor to 585 people in the United States, there was only one medical missionary to nearly ten millions of the heathen.

” ‘You observe that these could well be spared to go forth and disseminate the gospel. Would to God they were able and willing so to do, then we need not exist; but they must first possess this gospel in their own hearts and lives to be able to disseminate it, and they must further be actuated by the spirit of self-denial which characterized the Great Physician for body and soul, the Lord Jesus Christ, before they will be willing to do so.

” ‘Thank God for the noble men of our profession who have gone forth to heathen lands, as Scudder to India, Parker to China, Livingstone to Africa, and Post to Syria, but oh! for more such men who are willing rather to live to give, than to get.

 

A god-complex?

in the name of Jesus “When we look at today’s church it is easy to see the prevalence of individualism among ministers and priests. Not too many of us have a vast repertoire of skills to be proud of, but most of us still feel that, if we have anything at all to show, it is something we have to do solo.  You could say that many of us feel like failed tightrope walkers who discovered that we did not have the power to draw thousands of people, that we could not make many conversations, that we did not have the talents to create beautiful liturgies, that we were not as popular with the youth, the young adults, or the elderly as we had hoped, and that we were not as able to respond to the needs of our people as we had expected.  But most of us still feel that, ideally, we should have been able to do it all and do it successfully.  Stardom and individual heroism, which are such obvious aspects of our competitive society, are not at all alien to the church.  There too the dominant image is that of the self-made man or woman who can do it all alone.”

page 55-56.

Paul’s note: this applies to medical missionaries as well; one of my colleagues calls it the ‘god-complex.’  Do you recognize it?