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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Brian Schwartz

Why I Need AMEN and so do You

AMEN began with actually a group of physicians meeting right here at ASI back in 2004.

There was a meeting at Cahutta Springs and then a first Conference was in 2004 I believe in San Diego How many of you were at that very first conference?

He was 1 of the ones influential in getting this started with a meeting that began right here at ASI.

Then a bigger group got together at Cahutta Springs.

Pastor Finley was involved with encouraging us right from the start.

And so we've been having an annual conference now for 15 years.

Right from the very beginning, I was in a point in my medical practice where I was feeling just a bit burned out with the day-to-day activities of practice.

I would go off on medical missionary trips.

I'd been to Nigeria, to Rwanda, to Zambia.

And I thought of myself as doing medical ministry when I did those things.

I would occasionally do a five-day cessation plan, help out with CHIP and do things like that at my church.

But my practice was my practice and my ministry was my ministry and the 2 were completely separate.

You're just chasing that day after day after day.

And so this came right at the right time when I was asking the Lord Lord there has to be something else What is it that you want to show me?

Right at that same Instant You know I went to Loma Linda, but unfortunately I did not learn how to pray with patients at Loma Linda.

Dave DeRose for 1 month, and I had the opportunity to pray with 1 patient, which was the most awkward thing that I ever did.

I decided I was never going to try to do that again.

The gentleman was very deaf, I was yelling at the top of my lungs, and by the time I got there I couldn't remember his name, and all that just so I could sew up a laceration on his ear.

It just wasn't mentored, it didn't go well, I thought there might be a role for praying with patients, but I did not know how to do it.

And then I worked in a cath lab with a bunch of millennials, a lot of just hip young people that just knew it would be embarrassing to try to pray in front of patients in front of them.

And so right at the same time that AIMEM was starting, I had a case of a patient who had very critical left main coronary artery disease.

We engaged it with a catheter, and immediately the blood pressure just plummeted.

And so we had to put in a balloon pump and support her with a bunch of pressors and quickly try to get her over to the OR.

There's 20, 30 people now in the room trying to get this lady ready to just crash over to the OR as fast as possible.

And he just stopped and said, everybody can I have a moment of silence?

And to my amazement, these young millennial hip people that work in the cath lab with me all stopped and afterwards they're like, wow, Did you see that?

And I just felt this dagger in my heart thinking, I should have done that.

So I was challenged by Pastor Finley at that very first Cahutta Springs, the pre-amen as an organization, but where it was getting going, to actually go back and pray with patients and That has radically changed my practice.

I'm not going to talk about that today at the Amen conference side Actually partner usually with Pastor Finley on a seminar just devoted to praying with patients.

I believe that it is the door to open, or it's the process that opens the door to a spiritual conversation.

And it just had so many incredible stories, but we don't have time to do that.

For a while, I began thinking that God needs amen, and God needs me as a medical missionary.

There's a small sense in which he wants us, but I've come to realize over the last couple of years that that's absolutely backwards.

And so what I just want to leave you with the point is you can join Amen.

It's not gonna be for all the free stuff.

It's not gonna be because we send you all kinds of things.

You're not gonna get that big of a discount to our conference.

But the reality is that I, that amen needs God, and I need amen.

I'm naturally bent toward worrying about myself.

And the last thing that comes into my mind is serving other people.

And if you guys all want to admit it deep down inside of your heart, each of us has self and a self-interest.

We need to serve other people because that's the experience of the cross.

Jesus said that if I be lifted up, I will draw all to me.

He's got to be lifted up first and foremost in my own heart so that then he can be reflected to those around me and Over and over and John and Luke Jesus says he that takes up his cross and follow me We are called to take up a cross because it's the cross of self-denial And it comes in the form of serving those who are not always very desirable.

The people that would otherwise burn me out if I did it day after day.

But it's been radically transformative to see myself as now participating with God and reaching each of these people.

And it's been a radical transformation in my thinking, a radical transformation in my ministry, and I believe that's at the very core.

The gospel and the health message coming together is critical, and the gospel is the story of Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection.

The gospel United with this is for our salvation and the salvation of the world.

I need amen because otherwise I am self-absorbed, self-focused, be worried about all my things, worried about my vacations, not getting disrupted by going to little churches that are so dirty you don't want to sit down in them.

I would be skipping all that stuff if it wasn't for the call of the gospel.

And Amen has given me some practical ways to to push that forward.

I just wanted to read 1 or 2 quotes that I thought were interesting when I think about Amen.

So, this is the manuscript release volume 4, page 427.

The Lord has signified that the missionary, health restorative gospel shall never be separated from the ministry of the word.

The Lord Jesus has in his own example shown us the way in which his work is to be done in the restoration of suffering humanity.

And as Pastor Wilson already mentioned, Jesus spent more time in teaching and healing than he did in public speaking.

So a few years down the road, As we started having conferences and we began encouraging people to begin engaging their medical practices, their dental practices, and turning it into a medical missionary field, an evangelistic effort.

We, I don't remember what year it was, but we got the call from the general conference right after the Haiti earthquake that there was a great need for immediately to have physicians and dentists to go to Haiti.

I think because of Pastor Mark's connection with Rebecca, who was the administrative director at that time.

And within just, I think 24 to 48 hours, there were a team of members of AMEN that went to Haiti.

Some of them are there as long as 10 days.

It had a transformative effect on them and a transformative effect on our thinking that we needed to engage in this sort of practical outreach.

And so AMEN began sponsoring once a year an international mission trip and just a couple years farther down the road right around 2012 they started Having the experience of thinking what if we started doing free clinics and the idea of Amen free clinics came up right around 2012.

A little bit, initially we were kind of a little bit scattered.

We'd hold them in convention centers, we'd hold them in different places, but over the last couple of years, sometimes through difficult circumstances, like running out of funds, we realized that the Lord has called Amen to try to fulfill the niche of providing free clinics in local churches.

And we absolutely believe that there needs to be a connection between the local church as a medical outpost center, every church should be an evangelistic center, but it should also be a medical missionary center.

And so Amen Now is working and partnering with churches, as many as 30 per year, with our small team to come in and provide free dental care, free vision care, and free health care.

And that just has had a revolutionary impact in a couple of ways.

It inspires physicians and dentists I heard the testimony of 1 dentist who hadn't been the church in 5 years, but he came to an amen clinic He got engaged in the amen clinic and it restored his confidence and getting engaged with Adventism again.

So it renews our commitment to being involved in the work of the church.

It's for us, primarily, the world, secondarily, that they need to see that.

The other thing that this does is, as Elder Wilson shared the quote, this opens the door.

Medical missionary work is the opening wedge that opens the door to spiritual conversation.

But through a few brief experiences, I think it does even more than that.

Lindy had the opportunity, Lindy and I both were actually, this 1 was at Pathways, but we had the opportunity to help out with Pathways, which is a big free clinic.

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Why I Need AMEN and so do You

Transcript

Sponsor

Recorded

Related

Plenary Session

The Healing Touch of Faith

1h 57m

Global Medical Evangelism & its Relationship to AMEN

9m

AMEN 2010 Plenary Sessions

Going All Out with Witnessing: Is that Your Heartbeat Doctor?

35m

Plenary

Motivation for Service: The Explosive Power of the Gospel

1h 5m

Unusual Living

How to Motivate Health

1h 34m

Plenary Sessions

Guided By His Spirit: Celebrating 20 Years of AMEN’s Mission and Ministry

1h 33m

AMEN 2009 Plenary Sessions

Right Arm of the Gospel

1h

Plenary

Loving Service: The Heart of the Early Christian Faith

50m

The Sabbath and Atheism

1h

Plenary

Wholeness in a Broken World

1h 58m

Breakout Session C

The Cutting Edge: Getting Back to Our Calling

1h

Sound Doctrine