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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

John Torquato

Practical Principles of Health Evangelism

It's really important, you guys, to have church members as part of your team.

You have to have people that are willing to sacrifice themselves as members of the church, that are willing to participate in ministry.

Now, How do you get people out into the community to participate?

There are several ways I've seen it happen.

We take a list of the people that are in our church, and we just assign them.

You go to this place, you go to that place, and we'll make the assignments.

It will work sometimes for a short period of time, but it doesn't work long.

The reason is, is because if I never met you before and you call me and you tell me, look, I'm broken down on the highway, 40 miles from your house, can you come pick me up?

I'm gonna tell you no, I don't know who you are.

I'm gonna offer to get a tow truck and send it to you or make a phone call to your uncle, but I'm not going to come because I don't know who you are.

But now let's just say you're my wife or my brother.

And you call me and say, I'm broken down 40 miles from home, and I'm in the middle of the highway and cars are whizzing by me.

I will be in that car in 60 seconds with my phone to my ear calling the tow truck at the same time as I'm making plans for people to get to you before I can.

That's the difference between loving somebody and caring about them and having somebody be a stranger to you.

People that come into Total Health Spokane, their purpose is not to go out and do the work.

Their purpose is to catalyze the work, to be a matchmaker between the church and the community.

People that are young are willing to go out and make the effort and try.

They've got full time to do it for a year.

And when they go, they bring church members.

And as they bring church members to the homes of the patients, and they're sharing with the patients the things that need to be shared.

They're cooking with them, they're organizing with them, they're exercising with them, they're teaching them.

When they're doing all this, the church member is getting familiar.

The church member would never have stepped into the home of their neighbor, but now you just sent a young person to that home and brought a church member with them.

And as a result, when that young person goes, that church member has a relationship.

The whole purpose of Total House Spokane is to develop relationships at the church level and those young people become matchmakers to do it.

Relationships mean everything, but they just can't be conjured from nothing.

You have to have a way to somehow make it easy for a relationship to happen.

I take care of people in 4 areas of life in medicine, and I tell them when they first come in to see me.

I address physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social ramifications of health.

Because if I make a physical change with you, and try to change your diabetes, your weight, your blood pressure, whatever, but I don't address the mental, emotional, spiritual, and social ramifications of that physical change, you will not keep it.

And oftentimes, I'll get to all the other parts, and I'll come down to the social section, and I'll ask the person a very simple question.

You might think about somebody, you might ask the very same question on the social factor.

Now some people would think that would be rude.

I mean people that you are brother and sister with.

I mean people that are like your mother and your father.

I mean people that you can confide in and that will confide in you.

And I'll bet you at least a third of the time, The answer is no.

It is 1 of the greatest travesties of what has happened to us in today's modern age.

And so if you think about Total House Spokane as a young person coming into a place to help to get people off of the couch into the community and wait because they're not comfortable.

Who's going to do it if they're not comfortable?

Well, yeah, but how about if you do it with me?

But they get there enough, they find out, you know what, this is actually kind of fun.

And I can see how the relationship could work.

But I can continue the work that you have started.

And you have to help the church to sacrifice, because sacrifice is the currency of ministry.

With it we buy influence and we invest that influence in a relationship with Jesus with the patient.

And so in order to help the church that's what we're trying to accomplish.

Okay, so I wanted to share with you those things.

Let me share with you, I'm going to share with you a couple of stories.

Now, the reason I'm going to share with you stories is this.

I recognize 1 of the greatest problems that face health care providers today and even church members is they don't have examples of what could happen.

If they could only have a vision, if they only understood what the possibilities were, If they only knew that, they would find strength to step out.

So I want to tell you about a friend of mine.

And she came in to me with a community program that we did together in the church.

And this woman, she had diabetes that was way off the wall.

It was like, again, 400s are not uncommon.

She had hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes, and of course, all the other risk factors that go with that.

Recognizing that this is the place that this woman started, she came into a lifestyle change program.

Now, some of you happen to know David Scow.

And David Scow was 1 of 6 young people volunteering to come work in my office in Hayden, Idaho for the summertime.

Debbie Beal, does anybody know Debbie Beal?

Debbie Beal was also 1 of those 6 young people that came and there were others that came and spent the summertime doing work.

And just others that came and they spent the entire summer working for free to try to help people.

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Practical Principles of Health Evangelism

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