Reaching the Unreachable

The most talented pastor, physician or educator unable to use Christ’s method will find their ministry and Christian experience incomplete.

“I’m never going to an Adventist church again. They dealt so unfairly with my son.” The sadness, bitterness and anger were palpable during my physician visit with Mary[1] in her home. I felt the sacred privilege to be trusted with this vulnerable area of her soul. I had finally gained Mary’s confidence. Now God could use me and the church to help her deeper needs. “Confidence” is in Christ’s method in the book Ministry of Healing, page 143: “Christ's method alone will give true success in reaching the people. The Saviour mingled with men as one who desired their good. He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence. Then He bade them, ‘Follow Me.’”

Deep emotional pain and spiritual dissonance such as in Mary’s belief system can so affect the immune system it can be a driver of chronic inflammation.[2] Such was the case with her severely debilitating autoimmune disease. Mary had not worked in years or gone out of her house much. She could not open jars. Writing was extremely painful and computer work was not an option. Mental anguish or spiritual upheaval does not cause every pain or trouble. However, Counsels on Health, page 324, says “sickness of the mind prevails everywhere. Nine tenths of the diseases from which men suffer have their foundation here. Perhaps some living home trouble is, like a canker, eating to the very soul and weakening the life forces.” It is easy to pass by these types of missing members for years as we don’t know what to do aside from praying for them. How can the most prejudiced, the richest, the most hardened, and those who will never step foot in your church doors be reached?

Your neighborhood, friendship circle and workplace are full of them. And they need the truth you have in step with the urgency of the times we live in. With 67 percent of Michiganders seldom attending church and becoming increasingly religiously unaffiliated (41 percent in 2023), one may think it may take new, non-traditional evangelistic approaches.[3] Or will it?

In Acts 16, when the prejudice was so intense at Philippi that Paul and Silias were beaten and the magistrates begged them to leave the city, Luke, “the beloved physician,” was there to minister. Counsels on Health, page 498, notes that “His medical skill opened the way for the Gospel.” This was pivotal in the establishment of the Philippian church. But I am not a physician, nurse or in the medical field, you say! In Luke 8, Christ healed the town outcasts with less Bible knowledge than you and sent them as the first missionaries to a city that asked Christ Himself to leave.

Thank God that He doesn’t define your Christian experience by your technical skill. There are various callings and technical lines of ministry that God may be calling you to develop more. The most talented pastor, physician or educator unable to use Christ’s method will find their ministry and Christian experience incomplete. James 2:15-17 says, “If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Health evangelism or medical missionary work isn’t a complicated technical skill or exclusive to those who have “their lifestyle all together.” It is being genuinely kind and helpful with whatever needs you meet throughout the day. It is the gospel practiced in your day to day life. Medical Ministry, page 239, says, “Medical missionary work brings to humanity the gospel of release from suffering. It is the pioneer work of the gospel. It is the gospel practiced, the compassion of Christ revealed. Of this work there is great need, and the world is open for it.”

Mary would have never healed from past pain in the church without that compassion and good ‘ole fashioned friendship. There were kind church members who came to her house with me to do simple water therapies for her. She was strategically asked to help with church programs where church members could befriend her. It was in this milieu that she started asking spiritual questions and expressing a desire to heal from what had happened with the church previously. At this point, I connected her with Philip Mills, the pastor at Lansing. “When properly conducted, the health work is an entering wedge, making a way for other truths to reach the heart” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 237). How many more people are looking for a compassionate, non-judgmental listening ear? This is just as much medical missionary work as the work of a godly pastor, physician or educator.

With the religio-political landscape looking more and more like prophecy being fulfilled before our eyes, it is tempting to think it is time to hunker down for the time of trouble. However, prophecy says quite the opposite about us. “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:3). That means there will be more witnessing and ministry at the end of time, not less! What we read in James calls us to a deeper faith experience through genuine, selfless service to others. This is the exact experience we need to be prepared to receive the latter rain and go through the time of trouble.

And the world awaits this entering wedge of selfless service to break down prejudice against the gospel. Testimonies for the Church, vol. 9, page 211, says, “As a means of overcoming prejudice and gaining access to minds, medical missionary work must be done...This work will break down prejudice as nothing else can.”

Mary is now working, taking care of her family and ministering to others with the Lansing Church and Clinic. She is using her connections at a previous job to break down prejudice with a large segment of the Lansing community.