So why hand on the baton now? There are several very good reasons, not least of which is that MMA and CMF have been close partners for years, sharing projects, staff and vision for a large part of the existence of both bodies. Indeed, most of MMA’s major work in the last decade has been directly in partnership with CMF (such as the residential refresher course, elective preparation days, and most of our publications). We have shared our Medical Director Peter Armon with CMF, and before that, the role of MMA General Secretary and CMF Overseas Support Secretary were joint posts for over a decade.
So it seemed the natural route for both bodies to come together, saving on duplication, and to further strengthen the work that both were doing. There are changes to be made, of course – MMA was never a membership body as such (at least not in recent years), while CMF is run by and for its members (Christian doctors and medical students). MMA is a multidisciplinary agency, CMF is a doctor’s organisation. CMF has six main aims, one of which is the promotion and mobilisation of medical mission – this is MMA’s sole aim.
These differences have required a degree of adjustment on both sides, but like a good marriage, both partners must deal with the difficulties and compromises that make a good marriage after the commitment to wed has been made. It is that commitment that makes working through the differences not only possible, but essential.
In the new set up, the current overseas work of CMF will now expand to include all that MMA is involved with – including working with Christian health professionals of all disciplines. There will be a full time staff member working primarily with the non-medical professionals and students, as well as the Overseas Support Secretary and a Personal Assistant/Administrator for both posts.
HealthServe magazine will cease publication. This edition marks the end of over a century of MMA’s magazine under its different names and formats. However, the wealth of articles and reports from the front line of healthcare mission will continue to be published through the CMF magazine ‘Triple Helix’, through the HealthServe website, and through other publications. The vacancies bulletin and prayer letter will continue to be published, with some refinements.
The HealthServe website will remain, with a new look, and some new sections, but essentially with the same range of resources and information that currently exist. It will now become the overseas mission site for CMF. The vacancies bulletin will still be published in hard copy each quarter, as will the email vacancy update service.
However, with all that will stay the same, and all that will change, we primarily see this merger as the start of something new. So many people had independently come to us with the idea of a merger over the past eighteen months, and so many other developments were happening all around us that we could see quite clearly that God was pointing both MMA and CMF in this direction for a reason.
As a member organisation of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA), we will be part of a network of over 65 Christian medical and dental fellowships around the world. Many are engaged in mission nationally or internationally, many working with multidisciplinary teams in short-term capacity building work. Others are seeking to develop national healthcare missionaries working in their own countries. Supporting and developing work linked in with these existing ministries is one of our visions – to see greater capacity developed and released in the healthcare work of the church and Christian health professionals of developing nations is essential to the future of healthcare mission.
We also want to develop the information and training resources both organisations currently have to new levels and using new technologies to make them available to more Christian health professionals than ever. We also want to ensure that the expertise that we have contact with in the UK and in many other nations is made available to mission agencies and churches in the UK – to help them develop their strategies and healthcare mission work further.
The move should be completed by the time you read this article, and most of the changes and new ideas that we are planning we hope to see rolled out in the next eighteen months. CMF are kindly extending an offer of free Associate Membership to all HealthServe’s current readership in the UK apart from those who are already members of CMF). We hope that this will enable those with heart and vision for taking Christian healthcare to the world’s poorest people to continue to keep in touch with all that we are involved in.
After one hundred and twenty six years, it is in many ways sad to be laying MMA as a separate entity to rest, but the vision and spirit that launched the organisation in 1878 is still very much alive. It may have a new organisation around it, but at its heart is still the vision to extend God’s Kingdom through encouraging Christian men and women in the healing caring professions to take their skills and their faith to wherever the need is the greatest. We hope that you will want to join us prayerfully in fulfilling that vision.
Please note our new contact details from Easter 2004:
Address:
CMF,
Partnership House
157 Waterloo Road,
London
UK
SE1 8XN
Telephone: +44 [0]20 7928 4694
Fax: +44 [0]20 7620 2543
Email and Website addresses remain unchanged:
healthserve@cmf.org.uk
http://www.healthserve.org
