WHEN evangelism is based on Spirit of Prophecy models it succeeds, it is always growing and developing and stimulating new thought and effort, and its results are solid and lasting. The Valley Fellowship of Seventh-day Adventists, a newly organized company in San Bernardino, California, has resulted from such a program.
There are three basic concepts behind the work that brought this church into existence.
First, in keeping with the Spirit of Prophecy model we decided from the start that our efforts here would be medically centered. The health-oriented medical-missionary approach is a form of evangelism that is particularly successful among the wealthy and among the poor. The Valley Fellowship grew up in a lower-income multiracial area on the outskirts of San Bernardino.
The second concept is that successful evangelism must be church centered. No missionary program of lasting value stands alone. It must be closely wedded to a church. Merely presenting truth to people does not make them Adventists. They must be carefully and tactfully integrated into a local congregation or they will be worse off than they were before they heard the truth. And church-centered evangelism is not only necessary in order to make solid converts, it is absolutely essential to the lives of the present membership. They, not outside experts, must share the gospel.
Visitation centeredness is our third concept. Evangelism takes place only when a Christian with redemption to share encounters face-to-face a man who needs it. In other words, real missionary work is personal. Christianity is shared, it is "caught," it is epidemic. People are not won by methods. They are won by Christ revealed through His people. Methods are good to the degree that they facilitate person-to-person contact, and they are bad to the degree that they try to spread the gospel without it. We know that if the Spirit of Prophecy is the determining factor in our evangelism, we have to work in homes.
Work began in the Mill community of south San Bernardino in the summer of 1971. A local pastor and a team of college students began by knocking on every door in the community and inviting people to send their children to a summer recreation-and-craft program. A tutoring program was also set up, and a Community Services center was established.
We divided the Mill community geographically into districts, and two students were assigned to each district. Their responsibility was to acquaint themselves with the spiritual and material condition of all the families in that district. They helped people clean up their homes and premises, they gave clothes and food where needed, and they began Bible studies. A church was rented and Sabbath services were begun.
Planning for a medical clinic then began in earnest. Facilities were secured from the community in an empty school building. At nearby Loma Linda we recruited a staff consisting of students and teachers from the various schools in the university: the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing, Health, and Allied Health. As we planned for the clinic and continued work in the community, we began meeting every Friday evening to study the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, to establish guidelines for the work we wanted to do. We began remodeling the school building, and opened our doors as the Mill Community Family Health Center in June, 1972. The influence of this clinic has been growing ever since.
At the same time, a legal-aid clinic was begun. One night a week a local Adventist lawyer gives legal advice free to the residents of the Mill community. He meets his "clients" in a portion of the medical clinic facility.
In the spring of 1973 a new facet was added to the program. Land was secured in the middle of the Mill community for a church farm, and every family in the church was assigned a plot on which to raise vegetables and flowers.
The Mill Community Family Health Center is a free clinic; there is no charge for its services, and the professionals and students who work in it receive no pay. It opens one night a week. The patients receive the same kind of care and treatment there as would be given by a general practitioner in his private office. Medical students work only under the supervision of a medical doctor.
All the patients who come to the clinic from a district are seen by the two medical students assigned to that district. Working with each team of medical students are nurses, physical therapists, and lay members of the local church. Every patient who comes to the Family Health Center is visited in his home by some member of the team, who determines the health, welfare, and spiritual needs of that patient's family. Whatever the needs are ascertained to be, the team then works to meet them.
Further, each team is responsible for a Sabbath school class in the local church, the Valley Fellow ship of Seventh-day Adventists. The class is composed of all members of the team and all members of the church who live in the team's district. During the Sabbath school class period we give some time to discussion of our work in that district of the community.
Ongoing health - education classes are another part of the clinic's program. Each medical student has an assortment of plastic clips of various colors, each color representing a specific class; for example, weight control, diabetes education, Five-Day Plan, cooking school. When he sees a patient he feels would benefit from one of these classes, he clips his chart with the proper color. When enough charts are in the file with a given color clipped on them we hold the class called for, inviting patients particularly interested in that area of health education to come.
Our waiting room plays a role in the education program of the Family Health Center. In the first place, there is nothing to read there but Adventist literature. The patients do read it, and we have not yet received any com plaints about the lack of the customary secular literature. In a screened-off corner of our waiting room one of our social workers interviews each new patient. In another area, dental hygienists educate patients in correct oral hygiene. From week to week they check the teeth of patients to see whether the patients are practicing what they have learned. Most of the patients in our waiting room take advantage of this opportunity.
At this writing, plans are being made to conduct further short educational sessions on various health and hygiene subjects in the waiting room. We will also begin a regular program of Bible stories and songs for the large number of children who come.
This whole method has proved successful. Where two years ago there was no church at all and no Adventists meeting, now services are crowded every Sabbath, and we are renting the largest church facility available to us in the community. The kind of converts resulting from a method such as this are well grounded and permanent. The program is a continuous one, ever meeting and developing new contacts, while it simultaneously nurtures the growth of maturing interests and church members as well. It gives everyone a job to do in a systematic and orderly way. It is not here today and gone tomorrow but is a lasting witness in the community. Its image locally is not one of offensive proselytizing, but of service. We know of no evangelistic method presently in use that is closer to the one Jesus used. We know it works here and believe that, with some modifications, it will work anywhere it is earnestly tried.
