Health Evangelism in England

THE JANUARY, 1973, issue of The Ministry [which initiated the the Health Evangelism section] was a joy for at least two English men to read. Pastor Malcolm Taylor has been concerned with the wider approach to the conservative English people. My medical and theological studies have convinced me that the dual integrated role has not yet been achieved, and the development and experimentation of this approach has been a continuing and fascinating study.

Ellen White says, "If ministers and physicians will plan to unite in an effort to reach the honest-hearted ones in our cities, the physicians, as well as the ministers, will be placed on vantage ground. As they labor in humility, God will open the way before them, and many will receive a saving knowledge of truth." --Medical Ministry, p. 304.

Since we have worked as a minister-physician team, I have analyzed some of our experiences here in England and wish to share this evaluation with you, trusting that you might gain something that will be helpful in your ministry.

Is the weekly lecture the way for a doctor to most effectively accomplish medical missionary evangelism?

I think the answer is No. I followed a weekly series such as this immediately after a successful Five-Day Clinic to Stop Smoking in a densely populated area of London, and while it gave me excellent opportunities to prepare picture lectures of a series of health topics and also gave me valuable experience in preparing scripts, the results were nil. The attendance simply disappeared after the initial momentum of the Five-Day Clinic.

Is the Five-Day Clinic to Stop Smoking the best method of following the ideal of doctor-minister team effort?

Here again I think the answer is No. After having taken part in fifty of these clinics, I yield first place to no one in my enthusiasm for this most effective and powerful weapon for health truth. It is supreme in its public-relations and friend-winning potential, and there should be more and more of them, particularly in areas where we have no church witness.

If any are asking, "How many are baptized?" as some folks do then they must understand that they are asking the wrong question. In general, the follow-up of these wonderful friends reveals very little spiritual interest, and this in spite of their reading Good Health, and Why Not Smoke? and enrolling in health correspondence courses. I made a point of personally visiting all the ones who had attended previous clinics in Norwich, but only succeeded in getting one person to attend the mass evangelistic effort held in that city. But the function of the Five-Day Clinic is a must.

Should the doctor's ministry be concentrated in a "Health Spot" with the evangelist in an everynight- of-the-week evangelistic campaign?

My week's holiday experience with the team in Norwich gave me valuable experience in large-scale evangelism. In ten-minute talks illustrated with seven or eight pictures, we were able to deal with such subjects as "Three-Dimensional Living," "Medicine, Myth and Mystery," "Who's Pushing You Around?" "Heart Attacks and New Hearts for Old," "Color Blind for 5,000 Years," and "Can You Believe What You See?" But we felt that they did not have an in-depth connection with the mes sages of the three angels, interested though the folk were in the medical topics.

Is success to be found in the blended presentation of health and doctrinal topics with an evangelist?

Traveling twice a week to a distant city, I was able to blend subjects with an evangelist every night in the church effort. Further subjects such as "Body, Mind and Spirit," "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" (this from a medical angle), "Suicide and Euthanasia" (this was a topic in the local press at the time), "Tithing and the Welfare State," and "Medical Science and the Spirit of Prophecy" were presented with firmer doctrinal emphasis because this was in one of our own churches.

With twenty to twenty-five minutes of an hour-and-a-half program allotted to the health presentation, this association seemed both more balanced and far ranging in its subject matter. It covered common ground with the minister, and we felt that the one subject preached came from a medical as well as from a ministerial voice. This was much more satisfying.

Following this I had the great privilege of opening a full-scale Sunday-evening program for three successive weeks with Pastor Taylor in Southend's fine Civic Centre on October 10, 1971. We expanded the splendid approach of Pastor Coltheart's picture-lecture into a seminar in medicine, history, and archeology. The first subject, "Dead Men Do Tell Tales," can be woven easily into a history-of-medicine approach.

Malcolm Taylor's "Tutankha men" (live topic in England) gave me scope to talk on Egyptian medicine, myths, and mystery, as well as to introduce the superior medicine and preventive medicine of another prince of that same eighteenth dynasty, Moses. So we had a good dose of the health mes sage in the second meeting of the series.

From Egypt we moved to Babylon, and here to match the evangelist I had not only Daniel's health teaching and example, but also the example of the judgment of the eternal God falling inexorably on a drunken, dissolute lout of a monarch in the shape of Belshazzar. What scope then in subsequent lectures all illustrated to unravel the causes in medical and social factors for the rise and fall of nations Nebuchadnezzar's dream all over again from the medical angle.

The advantage and satisfaction here is that the health-medical phase gets equal emphasis from the beginning. It is balanced perfectly to the minister's requirement. If he wants to go to Rome, then Rome's fall is outlined even in Gibbon as precipitated by disobeying Gospel principles, and Rome's splendid sanitation system is under our noses in this country still. Most English people know of Pompeii, and they soon discover that we are preaching the same message that the first right-arm Christian pair Paul and Dr. Luke did in those early days.

With experience, we have shortened this series to twenty-six lectures.

I suggest for the doctor, in combination with a minister-evangelist, a SEMPAR approach Seminar in Medicine, Psychology, Archeology, and Religion. Through basic psychological principles and medical psychology, we can enter immediately on the assaults on the mind which prevent the access of the Spirit and truths of God. The brain can be explained as a computer, electrical, vascular, and chemical. Evolution and Creation come in for first-class emphasis on the second evening, and the Sabbath holy rest comes in as a medical and psychological necessity for the sanity and stability of the soul.

The physician is in a powerful, prestigious position here, and he can explain that the same mixture of destructive elements (material ism, racialism, atheism, and alcoholism, according to Professor Arnold Toynbee), which destroyed nineteen out of twenty-one previous civilizations can also destroy individuals. Then he can elaborate on how apathy finally annihilates both individuals as well as nations, and so he upholds and cooperates dissolubly with the minister's proclamation of the three angels' messages of judgment. The two preachers are one. As Ellen G. White so firmly declared, the health message must be so closely identified with the third angel that some may think it is the third angel.

As there were two dreams given to Pharaoh in the time of Joseph, the message of God's servant at that time may be applicable today: "Pharaoh's dreams are one dream. God has told Pharaoh what he is going to do" (Gen. 41: 25, N.E.B.).* So this two-pronged evangelistic approach to modern Egypt and modern Babylon combines to present one united message. God is telling in a most effective way what He is about to do.