These three stories, which tell of doctors who responded to a specific call to medical mission, may encourage those healthcare professionals thinking and praying through similar issues today.
The Father of Home Medical Mission
Burns Thompson[i] was born in 1821 and died in 1893. He describes (p 19) how he visited a poor house in Edinburgh to invite the inhabitants to a prayer meeting. He himself had just completed an Arts degree and was planning to go to Theological Hall in Edinburgh and then to China. The woman of the house tried to have him ejected but on hearing a remark from him that she looked ill assumed he was a doctor and changed her attitude to him. He, knowing nothing of medicine, asked her for a cup and bought her some Castor Oil, which she received with many expressions of gratitude! From then on he was always welcome in that home and was later able to tell of the great salvation offered in Christ. He began to ask himself if the study of medicine might be as useful as a course in theology. He turned to the Word of God and was amazed to find medical missions on almost every page of the gospels and strong confirmation of them in the Epistles.
While a medical student, he lived at the new Medical Missionary Society in the Cowgate, a dispensary that became part of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society (EMMS International). He seems not to have gone overseas for reasons of his own health but married and lived with his wife in the Cowgate. There was a need for medical mission at home in those days and while there they experienced an outbreak of plague. He came to be known as the 'Father of Home Medical Missions' but many students training in that mission dispensary did go overseas and started similar work in places such as India and Madagascar. After having to leave Edinburgh for health reasons they spent two years in the Rivera and then went to Mildmay in Bethnal Green where he was instrumental in the start of another home medical mission.
The Baptist Missionary Society
The first missionary supported by the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was Dr John Thompson[ii] who had sailed to India with William Carey in 1793. The first convert with whom he had been associated had sent for the English doctor on dislocating his shoulder. However, doctors were found only intermittently in the ranks of the BMS and the Baptist Zenana Mission (BZM).
The BMS Candidates Board was perplexed when a Dr Vincent Thomas, a recently qualified doctor offered for service in India in 1894. Having spent eight years qualifying professionally, he did not propose spending any further time on theological training and asked instead for a hospital, pointing to Christ‘s own example of a healing ministry. Many on the Board were aghast but eventually he was appointed and after a long and tedious wait received his hospital. It was not realised that a Christian doctor exercising his healing gift in the midst of a non-Christian population is definitely and effectively preaching the gospel. Before then, the occasional doctor to offer himself for service was accepted in spite of, rather than because of his medical training.
Subsequently a Medical Missionary Auxiliary (another MMA!) was established with Dr Robert Fletcher of Moorshead as Secretary. He had planned to go abroad but his father died and he reluctantly felt it right to stay with his mother. He served in medical mission for 30 years believing that in spite of the expense, to do nothing costs lives and the opportunity for the entrance of the gospel into those lives.
A Catholic lady doctor
Dr Madge Williams OBE[iii] was born in 1895. She trained as a doctor and serve in her church, opportunities that were denied her father. But the mission society she joined in order to get to a mission hospital in Africa insisted she also trained as a postulant. She hated the training and rejected her Noviciate (p 82). Eventually the mission accepted her as a secular doctor. Even then she had to keep complaining that she needed to work in a hospital situation with other doctors to become competent on her own. She served in Uganda until, at the age of 77 years with great sorrow she had to leave with other British nationals because the Bishop could only allow members of religious communties to remain and she was not one of them. An elderly Ugandan man came to say farewell and assured her that God only allows us to suffer for a purpose greater than we can understand.
These doctors were pioneers in their own ways. They had to persuade others to send them to do what they saw as important, rather than fill traditional roles. Are those who now try to follow them holding on to an out-moded method of mission? Today’s arguments against medical mission are that it is expensive and is not strategic, but rather a 'sticking-plaster' ministry that diverts scarce resources from the real job of preventing spiritual illness and death. The answers to this debate will be reflected in the preparation and practice of any health professional interested in mission but especially of the doctor, whose job description is more focussed on body and brain than on spirit. Yet our Lord seems to have spent half His time healing the sick, often at the inconvenience of His preaching and teaching ministry and His was the most strategically important life in the history of mankind.
These and other books in the library have only been skimmed. Some are old and fragile and some are not easy to read but they all tell of God’s faithfulness and may even save us having to re-invent the wheel!
The Father of Home Medical Mission
Burns Thompson[i] was born in 1821 and died in 1893. He describes (p 19) how he visited a poor house in Edinburgh to invite the inhabitants to a prayer meeting. He himself had just completed an Arts degree and was planning to go to Theological Hall in Edinburgh and then to China. The woman of the house tried to have him ejected but on hearing a remark from him that she looked ill assumed he was a doctor and changed her attitude to him. He, knowing nothing of medicine, asked her for a cup and bought her some Castor Oil, which she received with many expressions of gratitude! From then on he was always welcome in that home and was later able to tell of the great salvation offered in Christ. He began to ask himself if the study of medicine might be as useful as a course in theology. He turned to the Word of God and was amazed to find medical missions on almost every page of the gospels and strong confirmation of them in the Epistles.
While a medical student, he lived at the new Medical Missionary Society in the Cowgate, a dispensary that became part of the Edinburgh Medical Missionary Society (EMMS International). He seems not to have gone overseas for reasons of his own health but married and lived with his wife in the Cowgate. There was a need for medical mission at home in those days and while there they experienced an outbreak of plague. He came to be known as the 'Father of Home Medical Missions' but many students training in that mission dispensary did go overseas and started similar work in places such as India and Madagascar. After having to leave Edinburgh for health reasons they spent two years in the Rivera and then went to Mildmay in Bethnal Green where he was instrumental in the start of another home medical mission.
The Baptist Missionary Society
The first missionary supported by the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) was Dr John Thompson[ii] who had sailed to India with William Carey in 1793. The first convert with whom he had been associated had sent for the English doctor on dislocating his shoulder. However, doctors were found only intermittently in the ranks of the BMS and the Baptist Zenana Mission (BZM).
The BMS Candidates Board was perplexed when a Dr Vincent Thomas, a recently qualified doctor offered for service in India in 1894. Having spent eight years qualifying professionally, he did not propose spending any further time on theological training and asked instead for a hospital, pointing to Christ‘s own example of a healing ministry. Many on the Board were aghast but eventually he was appointed and after a long and tedious wait received his hospital. It was not realised that a Christian doctor exercising his healing gift in the midst of a non-Christian population is definitely and effectively preaching the gospel. Before then, the occasional doctor to offer himself for service was accepted in spite of, rather than because of his medical training.
Subsequently a Medical Missionary Auxiliary (another MMA!) was established with Dr Robert Fletcher of Moorshead as Secretary. He had planned to go abroad but his father died and he reluctantly felt it right to stay with his mother. He served in medical mission for 30 years believing that in spite of the expense, to do nothing costs lives and the opportunity for the entrance of the gospel into those lives.
A Catholic lady doctor
Dr Madge Williams OBE[iii] was born in 1895. She trained as a doctor and serve in her church, opportunities that were denied her father. But the mission society she joined in order to get to a mission hospital in Africa insisted she also trained as a postulant. She hated the training and rejected her Noviciate (p 82). Eventually the mission accepted her as a secular doctor. Even then she had to keep complaining that she needed to work in a hospital situation with other doctors to become competent on her own. She served in Uganda until, at the age of 77 years with great sorrow she had to leave with other British nationals because the Bishop could only allow members of religious communties to remain and she was not one of them. An elderly Ugandan man came to say farewell and assured her that God only allows us to suffer for a purpose greater than we can understand.
These doctors were pioneers in their own ways. They had to persuade others to send them to do what they saw as important, rather than fill traditional roles. Are those who now try to follow them holding on to an out-moded method of mission? Today’s arguments against medical mission are that it is expensive and is not strategic, but rather a 'sticking-plaster' ministry that diverts scarce resources from the real job of preventing spiritual illness and death. The answers to this debate will be reflected in the preparation and practice of any health professional interested in mission but especially of the doctor, whose job description is more focussed on body and brain than on spirit. Yet our Lord seems to have spent half His time healing the sick, often at the inconvenience of His preaching and teaching ministry and His was the most strategically important life in the history of mankind.
These and other books in the library have only been skimmed. Some are old and fragile and some are not easy to read but they all tell of God’s faithfulness and may even save us having to re-invent the wheel!
