More and more as time goes on the place of the College of Medical Evangelists in our denomination is coming into focus. For three decades our college has been turning out substantial- sized classes each year. Large financial sup port has been poured into our medical college, and the product it has turned out has been good. To match this splendid feat of production, there has been no complementary plan of distribution of our fine graduates. Distribution has been left largely to chance. We cannot therefore wonder that the resulting maldistribution of the graduates of this fine school has been the cause of some misgiving on the part of many of our people. Many questions have been raised as to the value of this large expenditure on the part of our conferences, which were receiving but very few medical men in return. It is becoming more and more apparent that we are beginning to awaken to the fact that distribution of C.M.E. graduates is a question of demand from the field, and that this demand has to originate with conference presidents, union conference presidents, and district leaders.
A New Trend
I have been permitted more especially in the past two years to be associated with conference presidents who were intelligently attacking this problem. These men have realized that if they are to gain the interests of the medical men in their field, they must fellowship with them through their first, second, junior, and senior years of medical training, and on through intern ship. To such a cordial friendship, the ultimate location in the conference is but the natural culmination.
In the month of January, perhaps seventy-five doctors, dentists, and ministers from the Georgia-Cumberland Conference, along with their wives, gathered in the dining hall of Southern Missionary College to discuss closer integration of the efforts of these fine people in their church and evangelistic work. In March a similar meeting was held in the Kentucky-Tennessee Conference at Highland Academy and Fountain Head Sanitarium. Physicians, dentists, and conference workers gathered from all over the conference for a meeting comparable to the one in the Georgia-Cumber land Conference. After a well-prepared dinner set by the young women of the academy we heard reports not only of the alumni around the world but of the very heart warming missionary work of our loyal alumni in the dark counties of the South. The conference president, summing up the evening's high points, said, "My only regret is that we do not have a hundred such men instead of these dozen."
The very progressive Carolina Conference administration conducts well-planned joint workers' meetings with their medical- dental personnel. Similar plans are under way in the Lake, Atlantic, Columbia, Pacific, and the North Pacific unions, where in the Upper Columbia Conference an aggressive program of coordination was initiated three years ago.
Almost every week we receive inquiries from conferences desirous of strengthening the medical-ministerial bond for greater effectiveness in soul winning in their territories. In the Canadian Union Conference, where we have so few physicians, we have six graduates interning this next year, with two more committed to going to Canada at the close of internships in the States.
At the time of the recent postgraduate assembly at C.M.E., R. A. Smithwick, president of the British Columbia Conference, met the Canadian students and graduates to represent the opportunities in the fast- growing communities of our northern neighbors. The enthusiastic response was a measure of the success of this concerted plan.
We have not yet plumbed the depths of the possibilities of closer cooperation between our medical personnel and our church and conference activities. There are medical opportunities in your district, in your conference. Start right now warming up to potential candidates for these openings, to medical students or to practicing medical men already in professionally over crowded areas. Shall we not cultivate a closer bond between our local fields and the students and interns who may soon be loyal physicians and church workers in our conferences and districts? Shall we also ac quaint our church members with our medical training program and its great possibilities for soul winning?
