p. 20 | Our Sanitariums as Training Centers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 5, 1911

Our Sanitariums as Training Centers

By David H. Kress

OUR sanitariums are not merely medical institutions, they are missionary institutions as well. Not only are the sick to be healed and the gospel to be taught, but in these places young men and young women are to receive a training that will fit them for service in the home and the foreign field. We can not dispense with these training centers.

About ten years ago, on the arrival of my wife and myself in Australia, we took charge of what was known as the “Health Retreat,” located at Cooranbong, not far from the school. We called for young men and women to unite with us. When we left Cooranbong to enter the new building located near Sydney, two years later, we numbered in all twenty-four. Five years later, when we were called to America, only one of the original number was left. None had forsaken the truth, and none, to my knowledge, had taken up private work. All had entered the field as workers. Some were sent to Java, some to Singapore, some to Fiji and to other islands of the Pacific. These workers are still engaged in aggressive and self-denying work in these needy fields. God has blessed them in their endeavors.

While our medical institutions may in some ways have been a cause of anxiety in the past, and while there may still be perplexities connected with them, good has been accomplished through them in fitting young men and women for missionary work in home and foreign fields. From these institutions we should be able to draw our very best workers to carry forward the work we are now called upon to do in the cities, and also those who are especially adapted to labor in foreign fields.

There is no reason why some of those who have received this institutional training should not in time become successful evangelists. When rightly conducted, instead of taking young men from the ministry, our sanitariums should give them an important part of the training for the ministry. Instead of taking women from church, school, and Bible work, they should give them the training which will qualify them to be of the greatest blessing and help in doing such work.

In future let us plan the work so that the missionary features may be the predominating one among all the workers in these institutions. D. H. K.