Category: History
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Medical Missions, an assessment by a historian
Christoffer Grundmann writes, “Most nineteenth-century people, medics and theologians alike, paid little, if any attention to medical missions — even if they were addressing mission. And when they did, they almost always did so in very limited confines, leaving their discussions to circles of experts. This isolation made it even more difficult for any general…
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Highlights shared by SIM medical missionaries
We have 250 medical professionals serving in SIM. We recently surveyed some of them. We asked each one to share a highlight of their ministry. Here are some of their responses. One bullet point per person: The opportunity to develop relationships with Muslims as patients, staff and colleagues Working with vesicovaginal fistula patients (VVF). The…
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The Work of the New York Medical Missionary Society
I was recently at a meeting where the idea of a medical missions institute was proposed, in order to enable our healthcare missionaries to better flourish in their international settings. In fact over 65 different agencies send out missionaries from America; if we add Canadians, Indians, Australians, Nigerians, British, South Africans, etc the number of…
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An Upside down World. Distinguishing between home and mission field no longer makes sense. Christopher J.H. Wright
Chris Wright is the international director of the Langham Partnership. He wrote “The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Intervarsity, 2006). This CT article highlights the changes in Global Christianity, where the “old peripheries are now the center.” He speaks of our “blindness to the ways Western Christianity is infected by cultural idolatry.” …
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Seeking the welfare of your captors
God removed His people from Jerusalem because of their sin, yet He wants them to seek the welfare of their captors, the fierce Babylonians. “Welfare” in the Lord’s command is the translation of the Hebrew word, “shalom.” Rather than retaliate in anger, or put their hopes on a swift return to Jerusalem (predicted by false…
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Due credit to missionaries – from the Lancet Global Health Blog
in HistoryAn overlooked WWI legacy: maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa — from the Lancet Global Health Blog, November 2014 While medical missions provided 25-50% of maternal and child health care in sub-Saharan Africa throughout most of the 20th century, their legacy is often overlooked. Often incorporating local knowledge and culture, missionaries provided family-centered health care…
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Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?
Last month my wife and I had our first visit to Jerusalem. We took these pictures at the site of the foundations of the wall of the original city of David, destroyed by the Babylonian army in 586 B.C. The sign continues to read, “The floors of the houses were covered by a thick layer…
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So where did hospitals come from anyway?
in HistoryMany of us have some sort of notion that hospitals are just a natural part of the community; the idea of a hospital must be handed down to us from classical times. But we we would be wrong. They were nurtured in an unexpected place. Among the ancient and pagan Romans, compassion was not well…