The Strengths of Healthcare Mission

Part 1 of a Four-part “SWOT” analysis

What is the future of Christian healthcare mission? Where have Christian medical professionals served Christ well through their work, and what needs to change?  In order to set a course for the future, we need to start with the past and present.  Over the next four weeks, let’s take a look at the entire enterprise of Christian healthcare and the mission of God.  This first week will look at the strengths of the healthcare mission. In the weeks to follow, we will examine the weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (a SWOT analysis for those of you familiar with strategic planning).  I will give my perspective and hope others from around the globe will join the conversation.

In September, the Lausanne movement will hold the fourth Congress on world evangelism and missions. Those concerned about health will ask, “How might Christians in the church, parachurch, and workplace collaborate to reach and disciple others in the context of healthcare mission?” To help us do that, we need to define healthcare mission and start to look at strengths.

What is healthcare mission?

Let’s define healthcare ministry as compassionate care of the whole person which not only alleviates suffering but helps provide meaning to the person, seeking to share the good news of salvation from sin and restoration to wholeness in Christ.  While healthcare ministry is often done by medical professionals, it also involves allied health professionals and Christians who are not professionals.  In this broader sense, the healthcare mission is a wider work of the church, giving itself in love for those who are suffering physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

In this broad sense, Christian healthcare mission is not just done by missionaries, i.e., those specialized healthcare workers sent by the Lord cross-culturally.  They are a very important part of the picture but not the whole. The whole church needs to take the whole gospel to the whole person, and medical professionals are a part of that design.  Medical mission is an important part of healthcare mission, but health is broader than medicine alone.

Healthcare mission is about the church around the globe serving Christ by caring for the physical and spiritual needs of those around her – it is not the purview of healthcare missionaries only.

The heritage of healthcare mission

God Himself is on a mission to redeem men and women for Himself, making a people for His renown. The whole Bible sings this story on every page, from creation to the new creation in Christ. Now, in these last days, we have received the fullest revelation of that mission in the person and work of Christ, who “was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23). We follow God in His mission; we do not create our own.

From its earliest times, the church has followed Christ by caring for the sick, especially those who are least in society’s eyes. Hospitals themselves became a signature of the gospel.  Even when the medical profession didn’t have many cures, there was always an opportunity to care.  The modern mission movement from the days of William Carey (1790s) to now has been augmented by medical missionaries serving the poor alongside believers in churches around the world.  Thousands and millions have received healing and salvation in Christ through their global efforts. Whole cultures and communities have been transformed in this way. Healthcare missions has an amazing heritage. 

The strength of healthcare mission today

The strength of healthcare mission today is the worldwide body of Christ. The gospel has penetrated most every country of the world, and healthcare workers are serving Christ in church, workplace, and parachurch agencies. 

There are now more Christians in the majority world than in the West. God’s mission continues to impact the world through believers who follow Christ from “anywhere to anywhere.” Many of these are medical professionals — both from the West and the majority world.

These professionals are often at the forefront of their disciplines. Many practice compassionate, whole-person medicine and seek to be a witness to both patients and staff, individuals, and communities. 

Many of them (not all) are aware of the historical Christian roots of modern medicine and combine the best of science and technology with the best of human caring and relationships. Many are actively making disciples, although some are hindered by the cultural or religious contexts in which they work. 

These believers do not just see medicine as a job or occupation but an opportunity to serve the whole person, with Jesus in the center. They see medicine as a valid means of expressing the love of Christ, which they also seek to share by word and deed. They are learning to work with ordinary believers to care for the needs of the whole person and whole communities.

How do we build on these strengths?

My book, Healthcare and the Mission of God, is written to encourage medical professionals and others in the pursuit of a Bible-based vision of healthcare.  We must build not just on the good history of the past, but on the principles and values of Scripture.  The healthcare mission enterprise has many threats and weaknesses – more on those next week – but we need to start by thanking God for what we have. 

Many Christian organizations address healthcare and mission. They range from traditional mission agencies to parachurch organizations and, most importantly, to churches around the globe. We do not always agree on what is most important (e.g., unreached people groups vs. non, medical vs. non, community vs. clinical, education vs. service, specialty care vs. generalist care, gospel vs. physical health). However, the task is too big for any agency or church. As a body of Christ, this is a call to collaborate, which means taking a realistic assessment of our strengths and weaknesses, as well as the opportunities and threats before us.

By God’s grace, we will be pulled forward by a vision of what we can do together. I tackle some of these deeper, cultural, or metaphysical (“how-we-think-about-our-work”) issues in my book. 

The future is bright if we focus on what GOD is doing and work together to serve Him. But frankly, if we don’t work together to address the foundation of our work, moving forward in our own silos, we may lose the beauty of healthcare missions. While we have been given much, we are in danger of missing the glory of God.  We must work together for the sake of the world’s lost and suffering.  We are a community. Let’s act like one.