AMEN 2009: Faith in Practice

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

AMEN 2009 Breakout Seminars

Dentist & Physician Role in Public Evangelism

Lawrence is going to discuss how he has utilized the resources in public evangelism and made them successful.

He's going to focus on how physicians and dentists can be helpful in the organization and planning of a campaign by using their influence and how we can use our practice to invite the public and how we can work with evangelism and evangelism with us as a bridge to gap health and soul healing, health and heaven.

And he'll be giving us the first presentations and you're up, Dr.

DeRose, I wonder if they were confused by the announcement.

Does everyone have a handout, the medical and dental role in public evangelism?

And I'm just going to start off with an overview of the role in public evangelism.

And I think before we start, we can just bow our heads and invite God's presence.

All kinds of thanks for calling us to be instruments for you, be servants for you in your cause.

Be with each of us, each dentist, physician, medical professional here this morning.

As we study the way we can be used by you in public evangelism, open our minds and our hearts to be receptive to your will and your direction.

We pray in Jesus name for his sake, Amen.

Or resources in making public evangelism.

You know, many excuses people make, you know, for getting involved in public evangelism.

I can't take the time off from my practice and lose them.

My patients may view me as a religious fanatic.

I don't feel comfortable bringing up religion with my patients.

Most of them are of a secular mindset anyway and don't want to hear about the Bible.

I am not a pastor or an evangelist and my ministry in meeting the physical needs of my people only.

A higher calling as physicians and dentists is to point our patients to Jesus for spiritual healing, isn't it?

When we step out in faith, God always rewards us with great benefits, and he always blesses us.

You know, in the economic climate in this country right now, it's very favorable for evangelism.

Because it's so easy now to people because many people have jobs, they are financially strapped, and They are more receptive to the gospel right now, during times, these hard times.

And with loss of jobs, many people have more time to attend meetings.

There are about 30 to 40 million people in this country without any type of medical or dental insurance.

And they realize that their best protection right now is getting to not get sick, be healthy.

So they healthy value is attractive right now.

And what has given us as medical and dental professionals for public evangelism?

The public overall trust as a single factor is very high for the medical professional, 76%.

A survey showed that of 21 the medical professionals are very high in honesty, ethical standards, and competence.

And this is an awful resource God has given us.

And God has blessed us with this resource.

The people and are receptive to God's work.

Use your office to direct people to public evangelism meetings.

Your office should be known as a center for lifestyle evangelism.

Focus on the holistic, the physical and the spiritual, because this is the only true way in which health can be achieved.

That's another blessing God has given you.

Use your supply, so you have more resources, and the Lord will make sure of that.

And he will certainly, you know, in my practice, I found that every time I reached out in public evangelism meetings, the month-end collection figure was the highest in those months that I spent time to do public evangelism.

In fact, my assistant is so, she can't understand it.

She says it defies, you know, you take more time off and more money in evangelism.

End of the month, your AR, so but we know who's in charge, right?

He's finally, and is a believer, finally said, I know I believe that God is working with you in your practice.

And work with the con on your local in public event.

That you many has many pro Homes of Hope, Wynn Wells.

We've the church so that they can get familiar with and befriend people in the church.

Because when people become familiar with a certain area, a certain church, with people in the church, they are more receptive to an invitation for meetings later on.

More about that as we, how we planted the church in the.

The final thing is that, as a catalyst for public evangelism in the short term mission, always choose a mission trip that has a, beside a medical, has an evangelism to it.

Every mission trip we do, we take a pastor or evangelist with us to conferences and the local pastors.

And they follow up on the meetings later because every trip, local pastors take over and have meetings later on.

So I hope you can do, and the resources that you have at your disposal, to be used by God.

Lawrence has been a very effective person in harnessing local evangelism and hooking them up.

Our next presenter is 1 of great experience.

He has worked with Pastor Finley and he is 1 of the favorite physicians that Pastor Finley has used in working in public evangelism, and particularly in overseas missions.

Butcher if he would share on harnessing the resources in public evangelism.

So the question is, as health professionals, how can we take part in public health?

And what do we have to bring that will be helpful?

As Mark Finley always used to tell me, he said, you know, Duane, some people come to hear you and tolerate me, and other people come to hear me and tolerate you.

And that's true, because the health component will bring people who may not have an interest in the spiritual.

I remember 1 of the meetings we did in Moscow, a guy who came because he wanted to stop smoking, basically, didn't want anything to do with the spiritual.

10 years later, I met him when I was back there and he was now a pastor.

And he said, because I stopped smoking, I learned about the spiritual.

And we don't say this, but we're also preparing people for membership, because there are some health things that go into getting people ready for church membership.

So some of the things we're covering are actually preparing them for membership.

We're also helping people have a better relationship with God.

If your mind's clear, you can relate better to God.

So you can have a better spiritual relationship.

And sometimes those of us who are here are involved in health all the time, and we think this is just so old, everybody knows about it.

A lot of places in the world, our church members have never had much impact with health evangelism.

Patti Guthrie

Todd Guthrie

The Well-Balanced Mind

Father in heaven, we thank you for the message of the cross, the promise of the new covenant, that we can have a new heart and a new mind.

You know each of our hearts, you know our special needs as to keeping balanced and keeping the right focus in our lives.

We pray that you would assist us today as we talk together and share together that we will be drawn closer to you.

We will have a sense of our purpose and also know of your goodness and your mercy and be encouraged.

Well The title of our breakout session is the Well-Balanced Mind and the subtitle Maintaining a Peaceful and Ordered, and you'll see that I added family life in a chaotic and demanding world.

You know I did that because I was convicted that it's 1 thing to think that you're balanced in your own personal situation and your practice and your ministry, but once you have a family, it's a group endeavor and the nature of the balance can change and we can talk about that but that's why I put a couple, we put a couple families up here friends of ours who visited and you're welcome to, by the way you're welcome to come by too if you're ever in California you're driving north or south on I-5 and you pass through Mount Shasta between Medford and Redding, California and Medford, Oregon, you're welcome to stop by and see us.

So, Well, we'll just have to speak up and go on here.

A couple of Spirit of Prophecy thoughts I think to anchor us as we move into the discussion.

The first from the first volume of the Testimonies.

Health of body and soul comes from seeing Christ and His redeeming power through the merits of His blood.

Spiritual and mental health comes from seeing the cross, seeing what God has done for us.

That's the foundation of all mental health and balance.

And then secondly, when the Bible is made the study book with earnest supplication for the Spirit's guidance and with a full surrender of the heart, as we were hearing about this morning, a full surrender of the heart, to be sanctified through the truth, all that Christ has promised will be accomplished.

The result of such Bible study will be well-balanced minds.

So that's Rembrandt's Paul there, and Paul was a student of the scriptures and gave us, through the Holy Spirit, more scripture that we can enjoy.

This is a picture taken on top of Mount Shasta, about 14, 500 feet or so, something like that.

We have to develop a certain amount of determination.

We decide we're going to go somewhere in life.

How many of you remember the application you filled out for medical school or dental school and the types of questions that were asked?

Did you have to, I had to write an essay.

You know, please tell us why you want to be a physician.

We want to do good things, and we apply ourselves in our studies.

We see that we're, we want to see ourselves progressing, but as life goes on, and each stage is different, how many here are, is there anyone here still in school?

Anybody in residency or postdoctoral training?

But you can think back in your experience to the different challenges that come at each stage and the responsibilities that come.

And the higher you climb or the more you take on, the more you accomplish, the more risk there is in losing your balance, right?

You don't want to lose your balance when you're at a great height physically, and as we take on more responsibility, there's also issues there.

If anyone has anything to share, including my wife, Patty, who's beside me.

Here's a medical definition from the medical dictionary.

Tells you even how to spell it, how to use it.

But nicely or evenly balanced, arranged, or regulated, such as a well-balanced diet.

So we think of the right amount of protein, the right amount of carbohydrate, the right amount of fat.

Or from an emotional or psychological standpoint, untroubled.

Now when you have patients come to see you in your practice, are they troubled or untroubled usually?

They're not at a state of homeostasis or they're not happy with how something is out of balance and they'd like help.

So in our thought process, as we go through this sharing time together, that's kind of how this is arranged.

We each have a chief complaint, if you will, or things that we feel that might be out of balance.

We try and do some sort of objective assessment, where others can help us do that.

Then we try and pull in the resources and say, well, what is available to apply to this?

How can we maintain or restore balance, right?

And then, you know, what specific steps are we going to take to do that in our situation?

And you're familiar with that process, are you not?

Health providers are always doing that, dentists, doctors, you know, you're identifying the issues and what have you.

There is research out there that points out that in our own lives, in the life of the health professional, the proportion of doctors and other health professionals showing above threshold levels of stress has stayed remarkably constant at around 28 percent, and that's cross-sectional or longitudinal studies compared with about 18 percent in the general working population.

So there's objective evidence that our professions lend themselves to having higher levels of stress and feeling imbalanced.

Here's a picture of my father and his second wife.

My mother passed away about 10 years ago, but my father, I don't put this here because he exhibited a lot of signs of being stressed out, but for the contrary, that he's a general surgeon in semi-retirement, but he carried on a busy practice, both in family practice and surgical practice, and seemed to maintain a balance such that all 3 of us, his sons, some of you may know George and Tim, we all went into medicine.

At least we weren't scared off of doing that.

But 45% of health care providers are reporting that most of their days at work are quite or extremely stressful, in Canada at least.

So I don't know if that has any political undertones or not.

I don't know if it's higher or lower in this country or what it will be in 5 years compared to what it is now.

It's important to have devotions in a prayer life.

When you get up in the morning, If you have a surgery schedule, anybody a surgeon here?

You have a surgery schedule starting at 7 or 7.30?

We have patients that demand our attention.

So even when we're trying to be outside and enjoying life, we get accosted by various challenges.

Sometimes we have hobbies that cost money like horses or we have other financial stresses.

We have a church that we want to support.

We have Vacations that we need to take so we can be with our families.

We have extended families, maybe parents that are older and needing care.

We have friends that we want to stay in touch with.

Mark Ranzinger

The Foolish Missionary

This is a very good way to start a program on missions because if any of you have ever done mission trips, there's nothing that acts quite like it's supposed to as you're trying to make 1 of these things happen.

What I'd like to do in the next 2 minutes, just briefly introduce Norbert, tell you the kind of program that we'd like to do here, and then if there's things that would be more helpful for your needs as we're talking, We can change it as we're going.

I've spent 7 years in Africa, and during the time, 1 of the people who came to visit me and was very helpful was Dr.

We actually came to know each other in medical school.

And Norbert has a real burden for short-term missions.

And so This subject today will discuss kind of the theology behind short-term missions.

What will it accomplish for the people over there?

What is it gonna do for the person going?

Norbert has made, I don't know at last count, 40, 50 short-term mission trips to all different parts of the world.

So part of it is gonna be the theological and practical idea behind short-term missions, and then he's gonna talk about some specific trips, show some pictures.

We wanna leave the last 10 or 15 minutes open for questions.

What I'd like to do as we get our session going is start with a short text.

And I'm only gonna use 2 words from this text, and that's found in Matthew 28.

And What does it mean for us here in the 20th century?

Go ye, if you can't go as a full-time missionary, is there something short of going as a full-time missionary that can be a service for people around the world and also for your church?

So what I'd like to do is have us just start with a word of prayer, and then I'll turn over the remainder of the time to Dr.

Lord, it's been such a blessing to be here at these meetings already.

As we have these few minutes to talk together about how we can fulfill that commission of yours to go, we ask that you'd be with us in our thoughts and our discussions, and your name would be blessed as a result of our time together, as our prayer in Christ's name, amen.

Thank you for the kind introduction, Mark.

1 of the things that I think is most beneficial for a meeting like this is to actually sort of start sharing and pooling our resources.

So the way I can do this for you and you for me is if you would give me just a way to connect to you.

And I'm not sure whether the people in charge of the conference would do that anyway.

But if you'd please share your email address and phone number.

I'm not good at calling because I don't like doing phone tech but I'm pretty good at answering emails.

I sort of do not like these types of meetings.

Mark said, oh, I'm so excited about going to the A-Man conference.

And I'm thinking, no, I don't want to do this.

And my very available excuse was, I don't have any more vacation days left.

So I feel like I sort of kind of backed into this.

Because really, truly, I don't feel like an expert.

If you have done mission work before, as Mark just indicated, you are at the front lines and things do not work well at the front line.

Frequently you have to be very adaptive and change the program.

So it makes you feel like you're very inexperienced every time you do a trip.

You do a lot of planning, a lot of preparation, but in the end things are going to work out significantly different than you had imagined.

But I had done about 60 trips, and I guess Mark thought I could at least talk about some of my experiences.

So if that's what you like, let me know, and I'll gladly sign you up for 1.

So not feeling like I'm the expert, I brought my coach, and I expect him to interrupt me and to set me straight, and I expect you to do the same.

I think that there's a lot of expertise, a lot of gifts represented in this room.

And I just want you not even get my attention.

If you have something on your heart and mind, just say it, please.

When I was 8 years old, our pastor asked us to write on a little card what we would like to do when we grow up.

And I thought I'm gonna just please the man to death today.

And I wrote on my card I want to be a missionary.

So he kept me back after the religion class and said Norbert I want you to stick to that thought.

And I had totally forgotten about it until years and years later.

Here I'm caught doing some of these things that back when I sort of rode on the cart to please somebody else.

During my baccalaureate degree at Bogenhofen, an evangelist showed up.

He was born in Switzerland but had been in the U.S.

For many, many years, and he came and did an evangelistic series for me.

I was 17 years old, and he really, really, really spoke to my heart.

I was baptized age 15, but that's when I had my spiritual baptism.

And 1 of the things that he said, it really touched me, and I tried it and it worked.

He says, You don't have to worry about setting your alarm clock tomorrow morning.

You ask God the night before to wake you up when it's time for you to worship him.

It may be at 3 30 in the morning because you have a lot of praying to do that day.

And it may be 10 minutes before you have to run off.

And even now, when I wanna have a special time with God, I say, you wake me up when it's time.

And it's weird sometimes, he wakes me up in the middle of the night.

Anyway, so I thought, and I always enjoyed when missionaries would come and tell about their big stories.

And I'm thinking, how much of that is true?

But it was just so exciting to hear them being at the front line and to sort of have to live through these sometimes terrifying experiences but always sort of come out praising God.

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AMEN 2009 Breakout Seminars

Dentist & Physician Role in Public Evangelism

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