A Biblical Theology of Medical Mission (original) (raw)

Sent to heal! - About the biblical roots, the history, and the legacy of medical missions

Christian Journal for Global Health

The article situates medical missions within the broader context of the healing ministry of the Christian Church. In its first part it sketches the biblical tradition of this healing ministry and its meaning in the life of Jesus and his disciples. The second section provides a survey of Christian healing initiatives and care for the sick from the Early Church until the emergence of medical missions in the nineteenth century. The third part focuses on the development of the concept medical missions and its changes up to the present, while the final part briefly reflects on the lasting legacy of medical missions which is seen in that, if Christians ignore and neglect corporeality, they disgrace God the Creator and God's incarnation in Jesus Christ. The article therefore concludes that medical missions remind the Church that at the root of too spiritual a concept of mission and too materialistic a concept of health lies a misconceived, non-biblical anthropology which profoundly distorts the Christian witness to God incarnate in Christ.

Humble Thyself: The Imitation of Christ in Medical Missions

Christian Journal for Global Health, 2019

Missions have been a part of the Christian faith since its genesis. Various approaches to transmitting the faith through missions have been implemented over time, some with unforeseen and frankly negative long-term political, social, and even theological consequences. In medical missions specifically, the consequences include the potential of compromised individual and collective health. These vulnerabilities make it essential to consider the theoretical and practical approaches with which we as Christians engage with our neighbors. Missiologists critically and theologically consider the motives, methods, and mandates of the Christian believer in the world. Efforts to reconfigure the role of missions from a past intertwined with imperialism to one that brings each party into partnership are ongoing. In medical missions, questions about how to assume a Christian posture are complicated not only by the sociohistorical context of the missions movement, but by the fact that medicine in ...

Changing Priorities and Practices in Christian Missions: Case Study of Medical Missions

This paper utilizes some of the literary research utilized in the grounded theory study dissertation of missions work titled: STRATEGIC USE OF MEDICAL MISSION EVENTS IN LONG-TERM LOCAL CHURCH OUTREACH: A CONSULTANT-STYLE FRAMEWORK FOR MEDICAL MISSION PRACTITIONERS IN THE ILOCOS REGION, PHILIPPINES.This article looks at change of priorities and practices in mission work based on the range of valid mission practices and changes in the human condition in time. This article seeks to show that development of missions priorities and practices is a creative process, rather than discovery of “one true method.” Medical missions is used as an example case to demonstrate that there are many forms of ministries that may be valid, and many changes in the human condition over time that effects proper prioritization and best practices.

Health Care Missions: Proclaiming Jesus and Healing Lives

2013

W orking in the field of health care is a great privilege as it provides a variety of opportunities to serve others in a holistic way, considering spiritual, physical, social and economic needs. It is one of the most rewarding experiences possible, putting God's love in action, responding to personal calling and using technical abilities and personal strengths. At the same time it presents a world of challenges including sadness, heartache and occasionally a sense of impotence and frustration. Health care missionaries are often called to serve people in extreme poverty with lack of access to modern health care services, economic resources and educational opportunities. Working with the less fortunate means constant contact with preventable diseases, as well as cultural beliefs and practices that can have adverse effects on health outcomes. More recently, security concerns have increased, adding stress to an already challenging work environment. However, working in the field of health care missions presents an opportunity to be encouraged and to reevaluate one's own perspective. It enables you to see people's positive attitudes in the midst of difficult situations with very few available resources. It reinforces the value of each person as precious. The challenge and opportunity is to help bring people out of their suffering and into a world where hope exists. Embracing God's principles, they can be brought into peace and healing by empowering them to take responsibility for the behaviors affecting their health. At MISSION PREDISAN our vision states that we exist as a Christian health care organization so that individuals and populations in the PREDISAN service areas experience wholeness-physical, spiritual, social, economic and environmental health-according to God's redemptive plan. We are not content to simply address a person's physical needs, or only their spiritual needs. It is the whole person that needs healing and it is rare that only one aspect of a person is sick. In order to really accomplish the mission that Christ has given us, we have to address sickness on every level of a person's life. The mission statement begins with the Spanish word impulsar or "to give impulse"-meaning our desire to stimulate the process of transformation in an individual's life. Our mission is: to stimulate the process of transformation in the lives of individuals as human beings capable of achieving whole health and socioeconomic development, according to God's redemptive plan. We were born twenty-six years ago in Catacamas, Olancho, Honduras, and have grown and developed as a highly structured local health care system consisting of six rural primary health care clinics, a robust outpatient clinic with pharmacy, radiology, laboratory and operating theaters, providing general medical care as well as specialty care, and an inpatient addiction treatment center. PREDISAN is God's idea planted in the mind of a missionary family, Dr. Robert Clark, his wife Doris, and their children Kendra and Robert Jr., who had previously worked in Guatemala, Africa and Asia. They visited Catacamas for the first time in 1985 and moved to Honduras in 1986, after attending language school in Guatemala. The original concept was to bring medical training to students being trained in the Bible school, Escuela Biblica Honduras, to be able to serve and meet the spiritual and physical needs of Hondurans living in remote mountain communities. These preachers, upon graduating, would return to their remote hometowns to implement their training in basic health and spread the word of God. PREDISAN's vision was to fulfill the commission

Considering Medical Missions in all its Different Forms: A Viewpoint from the Asia-Pacific Region

Christian Journal for Global Health, 2021

Whereas some medical missionaries may already have moved away from “traditional” models of medical mission, in the experience of the authors from the Asia-Pacific region, many potential medical missionaries in the region still imagine a stereotypical generalist medical missionary who runs a mission hospital. The authors argue that with the economic and socio-political development of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in recent decades, the landscape for medical missions has changed. Hence, contemporary medical missionaries should be well-advised to have specialist qualifications and be more likely to teach, mentor, and do research rather than only doing hands-on clinical work. Professionalism and quality, rather than “make-do,” should be the norm. There are more opportunities to partner with and strengthen existing local institutions rather than setting up a Christian health service. Furthermore, mission opportunities may be available in academia, government, or secular o...

Christianity and the Transformation of Medicine

The care of the sick has a long and cherished tradition in Christianity. From the distinctive practices of the early Christian communities and their care for abandoned children and plague victims through to the contemporary hospital system, Christian faith has nourished and informed costly engagement with human suffering. 1 It has also prompted careful refl ection on the nature of medicine, its connection to Christian understandings of God and our calling and the roles it plays in human community. 2 My task in this piece is to continue that conversation, paying particular attention to where medicine fi nds itself in the early twenty-fi rst century and the challenges that brings to Christian understanding of medicine and its role in the academy. I will begin by outlining my understanding of the current contexts in which medicine operates, leading to a brief discussion of ways that the discipline has sought to address the issues which medicine faces. I will then present a Christian understanding of medicine as both a scholarly and a social practice, articulating the philosophical-theological framework which informs this perspective. This understanding will seek to fl esh out features of medicine as an inherently moral practice, one informed by a Christian social vision and shaped by key theological commitments. I will close with some refl ections on two matters: access to health care, and the implications of a Christian vision of medicine for the ethos of medical education. 3

A Learning Missional Church: Reflections from Young Missiologists

2012

Edinburgh, was a suggestive moment for many people seeking direction for Christian mission in the twenty-first century. Several different constituencies within world Christianity held significant events around 2010. From 2005, an international group worked collaboratively to develop an intercontinental and multi-denominational project, known as Edinburgh 2010, and based at New College, University of Edinburgh. This initiative brought together representatives of twenty different global Christian bodies, representing all major Christian denominations and confessions, and many different strands of mission and church life, to mark the Centenary. Essential to the work of the Edinburgh 1910 Conference, and of abiding value, were the findings of the eight think-tanks or 'commissions'. These inspired the idea of a new round of collaborative reflection on Christian mission-but now focused on nine themes identified as being key to mission in the twenty-first century. The study process was polycentric, open-ended, and as inclusive as possible of the different genders, regions of the world, and theological and confessional perspectives in today's church. It was overseen by the Study