Medical Mission Pros and Cons

I know I'm not the most positive person; I tend to see the glass as half empty. But there have been some things that we (Rae & I) have observed around us that we do not feel are right. The first thing that comes to mind is a Saturday in August we went & helped at another church that did a medical outreach.

We did both really enjoy helping because to us that is what ministry should be, it should be down and dirty, it's meeting people were they are and changing their lives from the outside in.  The problem for us arose with the way the church conducted it. 

First off in order for a person to be seen by the doctors (its a free clinic) they have to be attending a church but not just any church it has to be an approved church. It must be a Baptist church but it must be very conservative, non-progressive church such as no music other then the piano no other Bible translation then KJV all women must wear dress/skirts to all services etc. For the people to be treated at the clinic they have to have not missed a service in the last month. They have a paper that their pastor or Sunday School teacher has to have signed with the date for the last three consecutive weeks.

I have nothing against church services and hearing people preach/teach; I mean heck that is what I'm doing here. But what I have a problem with is when you have the ability to help someone and you turn them down/wont help them because they read the wrong Bible translation. I feel that yes, we should be helping and taking care of the people that are already coming to church; but I also feel that something like allowing someone to see a doctor when they couldn't normally would be a great way to reach out and save someone who is lost. And isn't that one of the main jobs of the church?

To be fair there is good that is coming out of this ministry, people are getting medical attention when they normally wouldn't, and it is helping to ensure that they people are going to church. It is also neat because they had 5 doctors and a dentist who volunteer to give up a Saturday every month and come help people for free. One girl who was helping the dentist (shes a dentistry student), had recently been saved while studying here. She is from Iran, but the really cool part was her 2 sisters were also here studying to be dentists & she brought them along & they were helping out even though they aren't believers yet. So its nice because maybe it will help reach those two girls as well.

It was fun for me because I got to interact with different people and it was nice to be doing something real. Something that wasn't just sermon prep and preaching. I even got to use some of what I went to school for, cause they had me taking resting bp's so that was nice. Rae got to spend a lot of time sorting through pills and putting them little baggies for the people to take home. So that kept her out of trouble.


Before they allowed the people into the clinic it was required that they sit through a preaching service. Which i understand, but I also think is crappy. You have people who have come because they are sick and its a first come first serve thing so some people waited hours to see the doctor and before they will even start seeing people they are required to sit through a 90 min sermon (not kidding I checked the time).  Even though these people have been going to church every week for the last month. So its not like they haven't been in church.

As far as I know all of the pastors here (from the Baptist churches we have seen) go to bible college which there is nothing wrong with but I have decided that for whatever reason when they are studying preaching whoever is teaching the classes must hand out a crap ton of extra credit for whoever can talk the longest. Every sermon or lesson that I have heard goes on for 90 minutes or more. I'm not even counting the singing, offering, announcements etc, just the preaching part.

So there was some things I didn't like but overall I think its a good thing the church is doing. And we're going to try to go again this month.

The patients got to see a doctor and were prescribed medication if needed, which was filled in the pharmacy at the church, for free. They also got to see a dentist, and get any tooth problems resolved. A lot of people had their kids with them, to get shots and meds, and check-ups. The clinic gave out calcium pills and other vitamins to every patient, and take-home instructions for how to continue to help whatever problem they had.