Weakness of healthcare mission

Forty-nine years ago, I found myself as a medical student in a remote mission hospital in Kenya. After just one year of clinical rotations in school, I grappled with the challenges of diagnosing and treating patients. Many a night, I would return home and pore over my books, pondering cases like, ‘What  could this case of wasting and splenomegaly be?’ The absence of lab tests often left me feeling lost.

While I was busy worrying about these things, a middle-aged nurse at that hospital, who had been there treating patients for years, continued to work. It dawned on me that spending more time teaching her would have been wise, albeit too late in my short-term stay. I was there only weeks; she would be there for years. I could have amplified the impact if I had focused less on myself.

Last week, we said that the strength of the healthcare mission is the number of God’s people around the globe who are investing their lives to relieve suffering and demonstrate the love of Christ. So, where are our weaknesses? 

Our most significant weakness, I propose, lies in our tendency to focus on immediate needs without a clear long-term direction. This lack of strategic planning, as I experienced during my medical training, can lead us to become so absorbed in our daily work that we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Our greatest weakness: a ship adrift

As doctors and nurses, we are trained to deal with the problems at hand and classify and treat them. This training is excellent and helpful, but it can make us short-sighted. While the quality of our care is important, what does it mean when the needs overwhelm us? How should we respond when the same problems repeat themselves over and over? What should we aim for when the community cannot or does not want to change?  Where is our ship headed?

Our focus on the immediate need can lead to mission drift. We provide good technical expertise and care, but wonder about sustainable, long-term impact. How do our medical and healthcare efforts promote healthy communities and glorify God?  What does being a light in the darkness mean when we struggle so much to survive ourselves?  We can feel like a boat cast about in a storm. 

Our dilemma worsens because fewer leaders today have been around for a long time. There is more turnover in healthcare missions today than in past years when medical missionaries lived out their careers overseas.  And for the leaders who are not Western missionaries, too often, they have not been prepared for the challenge of ongoing leadership.  We are trying to reach the other side of the ocean, but our ship can feel adrift.

Taking a deeper look at mission drift and medicine

What are some of the causes of this drift?  What have we lost? I believe it is primarily because we have lost our true north. 

We have two competing maps and are not certain how to reconcile them into one. One is labeled “medicine” and the other “gospel.”  We will lose our way when can’t connect them well.  Let’s start with the map of the profession of medicine itself.

Medicine can then take a life of its own, and patients can become the objects of our inquiry rather than human beings loved and cared for by God.  We can be so caught up in the business and techniques of medicine that we lose the point. We come by this naturally since most of us have been raised in a culture that divorces the natural from the supernatural.  The division of sacred and secular is so deep within us that we hardly recognize it.  We fight against a tendency to idolize the profession of medicine itself.

“Too many practitioners know more about some detail in the anatomy or pathology of a person than they do about the person himself. While we may talk more of, and pay lip service to, the concept of ‘the whole man’ and ‘the complete patient,’ we must be very careful that in fact and in practice we do not forget him.” — Pastor and physician Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Mission drift from the gospel side of things

But alas, we won’t find our true north only by analyzing the medical map. My major concern in Healthcare and the Mission of God is aligning medicine and gospel ministry. Not only our map of medicine but also our understanding of the gospel itself needs adjusting.

The church is God’s instrument for shaping and changing culture, enabling men and women to flourish on earth under God. Jesus told his followers: “Let your light so shine before men that they see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

But what do churches think about this role of shaping cultures and doing good works in society?  Here is where we find a weakness in our understanding of the gospel. Our modern churches are inward-focused rather than upward and outward. Churches often do not see a role in changing and shaping culture.  They understand the power of the gospel to change men and women inwardly, but frequently it stops there without much attention to the physical world in which we live.

A richer, fuller map of the gospel helps us understand our purpose as human beings. It also addresses the problem of sin or how we have lost the way. Christ’s salvation restores us to God’s purpose to enable His world to flourish. We are freed from slavery to sin in order be sent into the world, not removed from it. 

It is an inadequate gospel map that separates what God has brought together: body and soul, church and mission, the gospel and good works. The joy is finding true north, the sweet spot of medicine and the gospel – integrated and fulfilling God’s plan.

Addressing strengths and weaknesses together

While some churches live out the gospel in word and deed, there is much room for improvement. It is not a private gospel, only about me or my soul. It is a revolutionary gospel that turns the world upside down. We need Christian leaders and teachers who love the gospel and care about healthcare. They will understand the gospel’s implications in meeting the needs of the whole person and community. They will help us align the maps of the gospel and healthcare.

At the same time, Christian medical professionals must help bridge the gap by aligning the maps from the healthcare side.  Some must dive deeper into the Scriptures, applying them to meeting physical needs. Not everyone needs to become a pastor, like the late British physician Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. But how can we close the gap between medicine and ministry unless we understand where we go adrift?  

Imagine the potential benefit of this kind of integration! Untold millions are marginalized and suffering because of inadequate health, often brought on by systemic factors in the community (such as violence, corruption, and injustice). A combined effort of medical professionals, church leaders, and believers of all kinds will do much to display the character of Jesus and bring glory to God. 

We must not continue treating the needs around us without considering where the healthcare mission ship is headed. We can’t find our true north unless Christian leaders—including medical professionals—work together to align our maps.