Twelve years ago I met a recently qualified Indian doctor. God had called her to work in the poorest slums of Delhi. Because she obeyed God Kiran Martin's famous programme now cares for 200,000 residents in over 30 slum colonies. There are thousands of other places needing programmes the same size, smaller or bigger than Kiran's. There are thousands of doctors and other health care workers needed to start them: the needs are great but the workers are few. Many Christians will have an idea of being missionaries, but have no idea where they are needed or how they can go. A survey was recently made of 100 Christian medical students interested in overseas service. Only twelve completed training for their calling, two actually went, and one stayed long-term. This is not the way to win the world.
Why should we go?
Consider Jesus' last words to His disciples in the Gospel of Matthew:
'Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" ' (Mt 28:18-20).
Christ has called us, His co-heirs in the inheritance God has prepared for Him (Rom 8:17), to go and win His inheritance. 'Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession,' God said to His Son (Ps 2:8). Jesus sends us to go into all the world, whether on our doorstep or in far-flung areas, to preach the gospel to all creation (Mk 16:15) and to demonstrate His compassion in practical ways; in healing the sick, binding up the broken-hearted (Is 61:1) and visiting those who are in prison. He will go with us and be with us always, as He has faithfully promised (Mt 28:20). All authority under heaven and earth has been given to Christ (Mt 28:18) to whom we are united; it is He who will win souls, heal and comfort people through us if we but follow Him. Mother Teresa once said, 'Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look with Christ's compassion, yours are the feet with which to go about doing good'.
As we serve God in all these needy places, opportunities will arise to talk of Him and our motives for service.
Every year the world has more nation states than before. We would be hard pressed to think of one country that a health professional would be forbidden to enter, and as health professionals, we have two passports: our national one and our clinical qualifications. We have skills and knowledge that people need, and above all, we have the one thing that is truly necessary; the gospel. Bringing healthcare skills to the needy is a wonderful way to open hearts to listen to the good news of life. Jesus healed people with the express aim of demonstrating the love and mercy of God.
What are the needs?
Where could I go?
Here are some suggestions; all of them offer opportunities of bringing healthcare and the gospel to those who need it:
The needs are so great and it's all a bit bewildering; how do we find out where God is calling us? We must get to know God better to find out; He has a plan for each of us, He has prepared our service. We must be open to God's voice as we read the Bible, pray and talk with our friends and church communities. God may speak to us through pictures of dying children in the news, through hearing other missionaries talk of their lives, through reading, daydreaming or more directly. We need to keep praying and trusting God to show us where to go and what to do. We must guard our call closely as it is easily trodden underfoot in the hectic pace of modern living and in the competition of the career ladder. We must learn to obey God and follow Him whatever He asks.
Take opportunities to find out where the needs are and what the world is like. Read about, meet, and understand people from different countries, go on a mission elective, join a short-term project or exposure visit, take a creative holiday visiting the villages near the beach resort and see what medical and social problems are ripping through the local families. Join a mission society and pray for some of their missionaries regularly, write to them and find out what it is really like. Encourage people to pray for you as you think things through, and pray for them too.
How long should I go for?
You can go for anything from one week to 50 years. Medics and other professionals used to go abroad for a long time and stay for years. Some situations still need this kind of service, but now the emphasis is more on empowering and training local people: to fill gaps, to start new programmes, to plan, work alongside and build the capacity of those already in the clinic or community, whether countryside or slum.
Long-termers are needed. For example, hundreds of vacancies exist in the mountains of western China. To work here, you must be in for the long haul: two years just learning Mandarin and building relationships with your Chinese partners, and only then getting into communities. Equally, short-termers are needed (e.g. a three to six month contract in disaster relief: straight in on day one).
Working in a mission hospital can last anything from six months to a lifetime. Centres of excellence or the corridors of power will occupy you for months or years. Sometimes visiting consultants and capacity builders can accomplish ten years of work in just a few weeks if skilled, focused and called by God.
When should I go?
If God has called you, you should go as soon as possible after you have the skills needed for what you're sent to do. This may mean sacrificing your normal career structure, but God is in charge of your career! A year in biblical and cross-cultural training is often helpful for the long-termer. But only delay for the shortest time necessary, as good resolutions and the cries of the impoverished are easily drowned by the lures of a secure career in the NHS or private sector. The good can be the enemy of the best.
Be prepared for opposition. Whether you are sane or stupid some people will probably oppose you. It may be your parents, friends or colleagues. This is part of the package - living beyond the comfort zone. Biblical and missionary heroes are pretty well divided between the sensible and the crazy. Some of those most used by God have broken the rules, jeopardised their careers and been idiots for the Kingdom. Others, probably most, have been missionaries through their normal, sensible careers. Both groups and all those in between, when really called by God, are equally valid. So it may be any country, any healthcare discipline, any time, any length of time, any place. It might be the well-worn path to the African mission hospital, or perhaps something never done before. We each need to be sure about what God is asking us to do. If we go beyond our brief and try to do everything we will get into burnout, or worse, become cynics.
What is stopping you?
Do you have a call to remain right here where you are? If there is no pressing need for you here, there is a crying need for the gospel and for your clinical skills elsewhere. Christ died for the sick-looking paan-seller by the Hooghly Bridge in Calcutta, for the orphaned Tutsi child with HIV, for the mother dying of bilharzia in the African swamps, just as He died for you.
By the grace of God, eternal life has been given to you, but they do not know of the offer held out to them on the cross; their lives are short and chances are slipping away. God has given you the clinical skills to use in His service for this very purpose; He Himself has prepared the good works for you to do (Eph 2:10). If you are afraid, know that the Lord of heaven and earth will go with you (Ex 33:14), and who is greater than God is? (Rom 8:31)
It will be difficult, tiring and often thankless, but light and momentary troubles are storing up for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Cor 4:17). If you feel inadequate for such a task, it is God Himself who makes you competent (2 Cor 3:5). It is the Spirit who convicts through your words and actions, not you yourself (Jn 16:8). If you don't think you have the resources, God has them in abundance; He knows what you need and He will provide (Lk 12:29-31). Everything is possible for Him who believes (Mk 9:23), since with God, nothing is impossible (Lk 1:37) and His word will accomplish His desire and achieve the purpose for which He sent it (Is 55:11). With such great assurances from one such as God, and such a task to do, we must all be missionaries, at home or abroad.
Ted Lankester & Rosie Beal-Preston
This article originally appeared in the CMF student's magazine Nucleus
Why should we go?
Consider Jesus' last words to His disciples in the Gospel of Matthew:
'Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age" ' (Mt 28:18-20).
Christ has called us, His co-heirs in the inheritance God has prepared for Him (Rom 8:17), to go and win His inheritance. 'Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession,' God said to His Son (Ps 2:8). Jesus sends us to go into all the world, whether on our doorstep or in far-flung areas, to preach the gospel to all creation (Mk 16:15) and to demonstrate His compassion in practical ways; in healing the sick, binding up the broken-hearted (Is 61:1) and visiting those who are in prison. He will go with us and be with us always, as He has faithfully promised (Mt 28:20). All authority under heaven and earth has been given to Christ (Mt 28:18) to whom we are united; it is He who will win souls, heal and comfort people through us if we but follow Him. Mother Teresa once said, 'Christ has no body now on earth but yours; no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look with Christ's compassion, yours are the feet with which to go about doing good'.
As we serve God in all these needy places, opportunities will arise to talk of Him and our motives for service.
Every year the world has more nation states than before. We would be hard pressed to think of one country that a health professional would be forbidden to enter, and as health professionals, we have two passports: our national one and our clinical qualifications. We have skills and knowledge that people need, and above all, we have the one thing that is truly necessary; the gospel. Bringing healthcare skills to the needy is a wonderful way to open hearts to listen to the good news of life. Jesus healed people with the express aim of demonstrating the love and mercy of God.
What are the needs?
- Addiction: - Mental Health Nurses, Psychiatrists, Occupational Therapists, etc.
- Care of the elderly - all disciplines
- Community based health care - all disciplines
- Entrepreneurs
- Family planning- all disciplines
- General practitioners
- Health promoters
- HIV medicine specialists (nurses doctors and pharmacists)
- Immunisation programmes
- Infectious diseases specialists
- Managers & Administrators
- Medical journalists and broadcasters
- Medical anthropologists
- Midwives
- Nurses of all specialities
- Nurse trainers
- Nutritionists
- Obstetricians
- Occupational Therapists
- Orthopaedic Surgeons
- Paediatricians
- Pharmacists
- Physiotherapists
- Podiatrists
- Radiographers
- Surgeons
Where could I go?
Here are some suggestions; all of them offer opportunities of bringing healthcare and the gospel to those who need it:
- Battlefields
- Churches and church-based clinics
- The community
- The corridors of power
- Disaster areas
- District Hospitals
- Eye and ear camps
- Medical & Nursing Schools and Universities
- Mercy Ships, Planes and Trains
- Mobile Clinics
- Nomadic Peoples
- Primary Health Centres
- Prisons
- Psychiatric Hospitals and Community Based Rehabilitation Centres
- Refugee camps and roadside clinics in war zones
- Schools
- Television and radio stations
- Urban Health Centres
The needs are so great and it's all a bit bewildering; how do we find out where God is calling us? We must get to know God better to find out; He has a plan for each of us, He has prepared our service. We must be open to God's voice as we read the Bible, pray and talk with our friends and church communities. God may speak to us through pictures of dying children in the news, through hearing other missionaries talk of their lives, through reading, daydreaming or more directly. We need to keep praying and trusting God to show us where to go and what to do. We must guard our call closely as it is easily trodden underfoot in the hectic pace of modern living and in the competition of the career ladder. We must learn to obey God and follow Him whatever He asks.
Take opportunities to find out where the needs are and what the world is like. Read about, meet, and understand people from different countries, go on a mission elective, join a short-term project or exposure visit, take a creative holiday visiting the villages near the beach resort and see what medical and social problems are ripping through the local families. Join a mission society and pray for some of their missionaries regularly, write to them and find out what it is really like. Encourage people to pray for you as you think things through, and pray for them too.
How long should I go for?
You can go for anything from one week to 50 years. Medics and other professionals used to go abroad for a long time and stay for years. Some situations still need this kind of service, but now the emphasis is more on empowering and training local people: to fill gaps, to start new programmes, to plan, work alongside and build the capacity of those already in the clinic or community, whether countryside or slum.
Long-termers are needed. For example, hundreds of vacancies exist in the mountains of western China. To work here, you must be in for the long haul: two years just learning Mandarin and building relationships with your Chinese partners, and only then getting into communities. Equally, short-termers are needed (e.g. a three to six month contract in disaster relief: straight in on day one).
Working in a mission hospital can last anything from six months to a lifetime. Centres of excellence or the corridors of power will occupy you for months or years. Sometimes visiting consultants and capacity builders can accomplish ten years of work in just a few weeks if skilled, focused and called by God.
When should I go?
If God has called you, you should go as soon as possible after you have the skills needed for what you're sent to do. This may mean sacrificing your normal career structure, but God is in charge of your career! A year in biblical and cross-cultural training is often helpful for the long-termer. But only delay for the shortest time necessary, as good resolutions and the cries of the impoverished are easily drowned by the lures of a secure career in the NHS or private sector. The good can be the enemy of the best.
Be prepared for opposition. Whether you are sane or stupid some people will probably oppose you. It may be your parents, friends or colleagues. This is part of the package - living beyond the comfort zone. Biblical and missionary heroes are pretty well divided between the sensible and the crazy. Some of those most used by God have broken the rules, jeopardised their careers and been idiots for the Kingdom. Others, probably most, have been missionaries through their normal, sensible careers. Both groups and all those in between, when really called by God, are equally valid. So it may be any country, any healthcare discipline, any time, any length of time, any place. It might be the well-worn path to the African mission hospital, or perhaps something never done before. We each need to be sure about what God is asking us to do. If we go beyond our brief and try to do everything we will get into burnout, or worse, become cynics.
What is stopping you?
Do you have a call to remain right here where you are? If there is no pressing need for you here, there is a crying need for the gospel and for your clinical skills elsewhere. Christ died for the sick-looking paan-seller by the Hooghly Bridge in Calcutta, for the orphaned Tutsi child with HIV, for the mother dying of bilharzia in the African swamps, just as He died for you.
By the grace of God, eternal life has been given to you, but they do not know of the offer held out to them on the cross; their lives are short and chances are slipping away. God has given you the clinical skills to use in His service for this very purpose; He Himself has prepared the good works for you to do (Eph 2:10). If you are afraid, know that the Lord of heaven and earth will go with you (Ex 33:14), and who is greater than God is? (Rom 8:31)
It will be difficult, tiring and often thankless, but light and momentary troubles are storing up for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. (2 Cor 4:17). If you feel inadequate for such a task, it is God Himself who makes you competent (2 Cor 3:5). It is the Spirit who convicts through your words and actions, not you yourself (Jn 16:8). If you don't think you have the resources, God has them in abundance; He knows what you need and He will provide (Lk 12:29-31). Everything is possible for Him who believes (Mk 9:23), since with God, nothing is impossible (Lk 1:37) and His word will accomplish His desire and achieve the purpose for which He sent it (Is 55:11). With such great assurances from one such as God, and such a task to do, we must all be missionaries, at home or abroad.
Ted Lankester & Rosie Beal-Preston
This article originally appeared in the CMF student's magazine Nucleus
