What is Medical Ministry? Medical Ministry is comprehensive.
About seven years ago, a new term was introduced to the church: comprehensive health ministry. This actually was a rebranding of an older term – medical missionary work or medical ministry. It was a good move by the church. When you rebrand or redefine an idea, you can shed its baggage and give it new legs. Almost like giving it new birth.
I keep the term medical ministry but would like to discuss the idea of comprehensiveness.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines comprehensive as the following: covering completely or broadly, inclusive.
These three characteristics speak to the comprehensive nature of medical ministry.
1. Medical Ministry is healing to every aspect of human life.
Medical ministry brings about healing comprehensively. It is physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual healing. It is a message of wholeness and healing. This idea comes from the ministry of Jesus who had a preaching, teaching and healing ministry. He was not only interested in their souls but with their bodies, emotions and minds. In like manner, we seek to bring about healing to the entire human experience.
We meet people’s needs in practical ways – whatever they are – to demonstrate God’s love in sacrificial ways. On more than one occasion a patient has described our clinic as “home” or as “safe.” I’m convinced this creation of a space of healing is derived from our comprehensive approach toward healing all aspects of human life.
2. Medical ministry transforms every church into a center of hope and healing.
Comprehensive Medical Ministry transforms the relationship of a church to its community. It challenges churches to not only look inward, but outward. To not just nurture church members, but empower church members to reach their neighbors.
Each church should become a center of influence. These centers of influence can vary widely and includes activities such as “lifestyle education, treatment rooms, bookstores, reading rooms, restaurants, literature ministry, lectures, small groups, instruction on preparing wholesome food, and more. The activities of each center will vary depending on an accurate assessment of local community needs.”[1]
3. Medical Ministry activates every church member.
The term medical missionary work can conjure up a white, male physician sweating as he listens to the lungs of a sickly patient in a hut with a grass roof. It referred to a special group or class of people.
Yet note what thought leader Ellen White wrote regarding medical missionary work:
We have come to time when every church member of the church should take hold of medical missionary work…no one need wait until called to some distant field before helping others. Testimonies vol 7
To White, medical ministry was not confined to a select group of people. A medical ministry that is comprehensive means every church member living and sharing a message of wholeness and demonstrating this in sacrificial loving ways.
In this way medical ministry is not only a program but seeks to engage each church member
Outcomes
In comprehensive medical ministry we remove the church out of the mental constraints of only meeting spiritual needs and expand to think along the lines of the entire human experience. If the church has been gifted with teachers in a community where the high school drop out rate is high, the church ought to set up a tutoring center. If the church has been gifted with medical providers in a community that suffers from disease, the church ought to set up a lifestyle center.
If each of the 25 million Adventist members and each of the 81,000 churches would engaged medical ministry that was comprehensive in nature, the results would be formidable.
[1] https://urbancenters.org/about
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