The Medical Missionary Convention
By A. G. DANIELLS
As announced in last week’s REVIEW, a medical missionary convention is to be held at College View, Neb., November 21-26. This convention is called by the officers of the Medical Missionary Council of the General Conference, in harmony with a decision of that council made at the close of the General Conference last May. The object of this convention is to advance the interests of the Medical Missionary Department of our cause. This general department was organized during the last session of the General Conference. The members of the department committee had little time and opportunity to counsel and plan together before leaving the conference. A number of the members who were elected on the committee were not at the conference. This convention will give the members of the committee living in the United States an opportunity to become better acquainted with one another, and to lay broad, practical plans for the advancement of this branch of the work. The topics selected for consideration at the convention are practical and comprehensive in their scope. If correct conclusions are reached, and right plans laid as a result of the discussion of these subjects, the convention will prove a great blessing to our physicians, nurses, ministers, and people. This is the first convention to be held by this new department of the General Conference. It is not expected that it will be a very large gathering. I understand that it is the desire of the officers that all the members of the committee shall attend who can consistently do so. An invitation is extended to physicians, nurses, and ministers who are not members of the committee to attend and take part in the work of the convention. I hope that conference presidents and ministers will respond to this invitation, and do all they can to encourage and support the department committee in their work. This is a part of our message and our cause. Of the medical missionary work, the spirit of prophecy has said:— “The different lines of our work are but parts of one great whole. They have one center.” “Never should a sanitarium be established as an enterprise independent of the church.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, pages 235, 240.
“Again and again I have been instructed that the medical missionary work is to bear the same relation to the work of the third angel’s message that the arm and hand bear to the body. Under the direction of the divine Head they are to work unitedly in preparing the way for the coming of Christ.”—Id., page 288.
“The medical missionary work should be a part of the work of every church in our land. Disconnected from the church, it would soon become a strange medley of disorganized atoms. . . . The gospel ministry is needed to give permanence and stability to the medical missionary work; and the ministry needs the medical missionary work to demonstrate the practical working of the gospel. Neither part of the work is complete without the other.”—Id., page 289.
These clear-cut statements make plain to both ministers and physicians the true course to follow in promoting the medical missionary work of this denomination.