Resources

Cross cultural Medical missions can be participatory and reap the benefits of integrated ministry, sustainability, empowerment, phase out. What role can the local church play? What are the advantages. How can that be employed? Cases where it has worked.

The volume of aid resources doesn matter as much as the implementation philosophy that the aid is being channeled into. The old adage that ideas have consequences is quite true untested and shallow ideas often have negative consequences on those that are being served. This session will explore the difference between a dependency philosophy and an empowering strategy, and these ideas will be shared in such a way to be applied to any aid related work.

This workshop will discuss the differences between provision of community health and coping with individual diseases via cure, relief or palliation. The ethics of the two systems are quite different and raise pointed problems about the proper use of limited resources.

This workshop will discuss the relationship between ethics and faith and how conversion leads to only slowly to the development of ethical behaviour consistent with the new faith. It will also discuss the rising recognition amongst non-christian intellectuals that attention must be paid to ethical regeneration in the west.

Medical missionaries will find their resources to help others limited in nearly every realm of their work-time, skills, financial, emotional, equipment and spiritual to name a few. We know what care is available to patients and come skilled to provide it. But many times we are unable to provide it due to limitations of many kinds on the field. How does one decide what care to provide and whom to provide it to? This talk will discuss the conflicts the medical missionary finds on the mission field as they serve to provide health care in less than optimal circumstances. Using Jesus healing ministry as an example, guidelines will be provided on how to effectively serve Christ in situations where care cannot be given to all as the medical missionary would like. A foundation in decision making and practical guidelines w!ill be discussed to assist the front line missionary with these problems on the field.

This workshop includes a number of case presentations, which were events reported to us from multiple sources over our years of medical missions service. It is also our desire to review some of the problems caused by mission teams so we can mitigate the potential harm teams can do while working in communities. The idea of potential harm resulting from medical missions may be difficult for some to grasp; but it does exist and in a much more real way than most of us care to acknowledge.

Short-term medical missions often destroy community confidence in the local health system. Working through true case presentations we demonstrate how medical mission teams can cause harm in communities. These case presentations also show how the local medical community can be negatively impacted by mission teams. We then work through medical mission strategies that aid and support local health providers.