By the editors of Ministry.

Loma Linda Alumni Take Second Look at "Right Arm" Concept

 

LOMA LINDA UNIVERSITY School of Medicine is interested in and dedicated to the objectives and goals of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Hundreds of its alumni have served or are serving the church at home and abroad. Such activities as the recent heart-team program in Saudi Arabia have been a great blessing to our work.

The Alumni Association has a standing committee devoted to augmenting the carrying of the gospel to all the world. Known as the medical evangelism council, it is a subsidiary body of the Alumni Association of Loma Linda University School of Medicine. One of its duties is to work for the improvement of the situation of association members in foreign mission service.

Led by Council Chairman Carl L. Bauer, M.D., an internist at Loma Linda University, the council consists of eight physicians who are regularly appointed members and hold four-year terms. All veteran missionaries, these men represent a combined total of 44 years of mission service.

In addition to these members, there are a number of ex-officio councilmen who meet with the group, including officials of the General Conference Department of Health, a representative from the student-missions organization on campus, and former General Conference Associate Secretary Donald W. Hunter, who is now serving as the Loma Linda University campus representative for the General Conference.

Dr. Bauer and his committee will be submitting features that will appear in subsequent issues of THE MINISTRY, designed to keep our readers informed on the latest developments in this all-important area of service.

This month's article by Dr. Bauer is used to introduce a careful second look at God's plan for using the "right arm" (medical missionary work) as He in tended it to be used. Every Seventh-day Adventist pastor needs to prayerfully consider the program God has outlined for medical missionary outreach and determine to implement it as God leads.

J.W. McF.

 

Ministering to the Disillisioned

WE CAN'T escape the fact that many about us today are disillusioned. People are disillusioned with war, and, undoubtedly, it's good that they are. For a long period of earth's history war was viewed as a means of solving the problems that faced mankind—a patriotic way of purging the world of evil and asserting the righteousness of the cause of those nations waging war. During the Vietnam conflict, however, the people who remained at home were carried by means of television to the battlefield itself, and they began to recognize how dreadful and evil war really is.

In America we seem to be disillusioned with politicians, and there are evidences that this may have been true for even a longer period of time in some other countries. Politicians here have always been suspect, but now our suspicions have been more than confirmed. And I'm not talking only about Water gate. Our disenchantment is based on revelations that go back to Teddy Roosevelt and the sinking of the Maine and to the part that Churchill is said to have played in not preventing the sinking of the Lusitania.

We are disillusioned also with science, the great god of the twentieth century in which we have placed so much hope and faith. It's not that science hasn't done wonders. The recent technological miracle of landing on Mars is evidence enough that wonders are still being performed. Yet we have come to expect so much more of science. During the past several years, however, we have become more aware of the limitations of science. How often have you heard someone say, "Well, scientists may be able to put a man on the moon, but they can't cure the common cold"? And, of course, there is nothing at all that science is able to do to cure the deep spiritual ailments that beset man kind.

We could go on in our chronicle of disillusionment, but that is not the point we want to make in this editorial. What we are concerned with is, what has caused this disillusionment? As indicated above, television has been one of the factors—not that the medium is evil in itself. It has just seemed to make us more aware of the evil that is inherent in man.

According to Marshall McLuhan, the technological revolution that accompanied the invention of movable type changed Western civilization from an "oral" to a "visual" culture. In a sense, at least, this was one of the major factors that brought about the Protestant Reformation.

Is it not likely that the "global village" created by the advent of television and, actually prior to that, by the development of moving pictures will result in such a great cultural shock to the en tire world that a new reformation must follow?

Just as the printed word published widely in the vernacular brought a clearer vision of the meaning of salvation by faith in Christ to the sixteenth-century world, may not the visual impact of Christ, the Word, incarnated in those fully yielded to Him, bring a shattering new concept of God at work in men's lives in our world today? Isn't it time to put psychoanalyzed, dichotomized, subjectivized man back together again and to begin to deal with him as an integrated whole?

This, of course, demands ministers who have it all together in their own lives. More than all else, the Christian community demands one thing of the ministry in this age of disillusionment, that is, that we "practice what we preach." They have seen too great a disparity between claims and practices on the part of Christians. Can we blame them for expecting men of God to be just that—men of God? Disillusioned man will settle for nothing else and today can spot a sham ten miles away.

In an age turned off by church councils and pronouncements, it is becoming apparent that the individual pastor counts more than ever. If the minister is to adequately meet the needs presented by disillusioned man he must do more than ape institutional methods and depend on ecclesiastical authority for his authenticity. Unless he practices what he preaches, he will not succeed in filling the vacuum created by the growing disillusionment discussed here. More than ever before, the pew is saying to the pulpit, "We would see Jesus." Only the preacher who has a deep personal relationship with Christ can adequately meet this need.

L. R. V. D.


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By the editors of Ministry.

February 1977

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