Medical Missionary Evangelism via the Telephone

Yes, believe it or not, medical evangelism can be done by telephone. I have found that the health and gospel ministries can be effectively combined by using telephone recording machines.

At the suggestion of the conference presi­dent, R. E. Finney, Jr., a Smokers Dial was started two years ago in Milwaukee with four telephone recording machines. Free literature was offered at the close of each telephone message, giving the parsonage telephone number as the one to call by those desiring literature. Such leaflets as Smoke Signals, Listen magazine, Should a Girl Smoke? Should a Boy Smoke? and How to Stop Smoking were offered. The leaflet was changed about every two weeks. The two-and-a-half-minute telephone mes­sages were changed every day.

I have a long, wide shelf in my dining room, so the telephone machines were in­stalled in my home. What a thrill it was to hear the click of the machines and see the lights go on every time someone called! Day and night the lights were on almost continuously. If one telephone was busy, the call would automatically be transferred to the next telephone, until all were busy.

Church members were invited to volun­teer to deliver the literature and designate the area of the city in which they wished to serve. As it worked out, the city was divided into forty sections, each section served by a church member.

Smokers Dial and Health Dial

As the calls began to taper off, two of the recording telephones were removed. One was retained as a permanent Smokers Dial, and the other as a Health Dial. Milwaukee Concordia Avenue church, with 133 mem­bers, voted to assume the expense of the two projects, and has been supporting them ever since, along with a few dona­tions that have come in from our listeners. The cost of maintaining the two machines is forty-eight dollars a month. Of course, there has been the expense of the literature and a small amount of advertising. Each year at Ingathering time cards are included with each leaflet, giving the numbers to call for the dial services. The telephones are especially busy at this time!

For Health Dial Dr. Wayne McFarland's Better Living, Dr. DeWitt Fox's The Doc­tor Prescribes, and various Life and Health articles have been used. For free literature copies of Life and Health and Public Health pamphlets on a variety of subjects have been used.

For several months, in connection with Health Dial, a Slimline series was conducted, and as many as two hundred calls for literature were received in three days. Such literature as low-fat menus, 1,000-calorie diets, and Life and Health maga­zines containing articles on diet have been given away. The various members of my family have been kept busy answering the telephone day and night for a time.

Inspiration Dial

On Wednesdays and Sabbaths an Inspi­ration Dial has been provided, using Steps to Christ for the messages. As free litera­ture on this program, Steps to Christ and Bibles with lessons as outlined by the Bible Speaks plan have been offered. Many peo­ple have called for these. Many who have first called for health literature have fol­lowed this up by calls for Bibles.

Every two months programs have been made up, giving the topic for each day. These have been mailed out to the three thousand people on the mailing list. With every program and every piece of literature given away there has been included a card offering a free Bible course or a free Bible.

It has been interesting to note that espe­cially on Health Dial many people have called telling of their various ailments and asking questions along health lines. Fortu­nately, my wife is a registered nurse and has been able to answer many of these questions.

The Follow-up

The best follow-up for this work is a med­ical missionary visiting service by church members who have been trained as home health aids, men to treat men and women to treat women. The instructors were a minister, a physician, two registered nurses, and a first-aid instructor. We organized our own course of training for this and chose the people we wanted to have study with us. We chose six young married couples. The classes included home nursing, first aid, anatomy and physiology, hydrotherapy, and nutrition (using the SDA Home Nurs­ing Supplement and the Eat to Live film­strips from the Review and Herald). We also had a cooking school. The Five-Day Plan to Stop Smoking films were shown. Each couple was given a copy of the book, How to StoD Smoking in Five Days, and each individual received a control book. Incidentally, one of our class is now study­ing at the University of Wisconsin, Mil­waukee branch, and doing a lot of missionary work with the books on smoking. One couple is studying diet and will be working to some extent with a cook from one of our sanitariums in preparation for starting a vegetarian restaurant.

Battle Creek offers a one-year course in subjects that would qualify people to operate treatment rooms, possibly under the supervision of a doctor or nurse. We would like to establish a training center here, pos­sibly called the Ellen G. White School of Health and Nutrition.

Each couple received a subscription to Life and Health magazine The class was provided with whatever books from the

medical classics that were not already in their personal libraries. These books include Ministry of Healing, Medical Ministry, Temperance, Counsels on Health, Counsels on Diet and Foods, and The Story of Our Health Message. The registration fee was fifteen dollars, to cover the cost of these books.

 The class members were encouraged to read Steps to Christ and to follow the MV Character Classics Leaflet, From Manger to Majesty, combining a study of the four Gospels with The Desire of Ages. They were encouraged to keep the Morning Watch and study their Sabbath school les­sons faithfully, as "these lessons are given to us for the times in which we live."

Medical Missionary Work Summarized

The work of medical missionary workers is summed up in the following ten points as outlined in Evangelism, by Ellen G. White, under the heading "Medical Evangelism," pages 513-551.

1. Know and practice health reform yourself.
2. Be prepared to give simple treatments to the sick.
3. Pray with them. "As the medical mis­sionary works on the body, God works upon the heart."
4. Be prepared to tell of Christ's work here on earth. You will often have oppor­tunities to do this. Tell the suffering ones the story of God's love, the salvation story.
5. Be prepared to: (a) minister to the sick, (b) feed the hungry, (c) clothe the naked, (d) tenderly point all to Jesus.
6. Be prepared to give instructions in the principles of healthful living.
7. Teach simple methods of treating the sick.
8. Instruct in dietetic reform. Prepare food in simple, appetizing ways, a nourish­ing diet without the use of flesh foods. It is better to know how to keep well than how to cure disease.
9. In a special sense the healing of the sick is our work. We should work among the lowly, poor, and oppressed (this can include all classes of people).
10. When people ask questions about our religion, we should be ready with an answer for the hope that is within us.

The first fruits from this work are soon to be baptized. About a year and a half ago a man called for the literature that was being offered on Smokers Dial. He men­tioned having the flu and was pleased to accept an offer of a hydrotherapy treat­ment. This he received along with a prayer by a nurse who went with the individual who delivered the literature. He made a ten-dollar donation at that time. He looked over the offer of a free Bible that was in­cluded with his literature and called for one. The lessons were delivered at the same time as the Bible. The man became so en­grossed with the Bible lessons that he went through all fourteen of them in one week. Later he attended church and also evangel­istic meetings in the church. At the pres­ent time he and his wife are preparing for baptism.

In Medical Ministry are these words: "In every large city there should be corps of organized, well-disciplined workers; not merely one or two, but scores should be set to work. But the perplexing question is yet unsolved, how they will be sustained." Pages 300, 301.

So far this work in Milwaukee has been done on a volunteer basis. I do believe that a more effective work could be done if these workers were sponsored in some way so that they might be able to spend their full time at this work. Advertising has not been done to any extent because of lack of funds and time. In New York City an excellent program is being conducted from a central registry, training and sending out Home Health aides. Medicare legislation pro­vides for such workers. Inquiries have been made, and there is no really concrete pro­gram to be followed as yet. The Home Health Aide program is still in the experi­mental stage.

 

On page 523 of Evangelism is this state­ment: "I wish to tell you that soon there will be no work done in ministerial lines but medical missionary work. The work of a minister is to minister. Our ministers are to work on the gospel plan of ministering. . . . You will never be ministers after the gospel order till you show a decided inter­est in medical missionary work, the gospel of healing and blessing and strengthening." Medical Ministry tells us that physicians and ministers are to train workers to do medical missionary work. Now is the time to take advantage of this advice.