AMEN 2009 Student Conference: The Ministry of Healing

Wes Youngberg

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

The Application of Truly Wholistic Lifestyle Medicine

Okay, well, let's go ahead and get started because time is urgent, right, for us.

Let me begin by going to the Word and going to the book of Matthew, if you will, in chapter 4.

Last night and this morning, we talked about the Great Commission.

But I wanna read to you a similar passage that comes earlier in Matthew chapter 4 where it talks about starting in verses 23, Jesus healing the sick.

And As we look at our own healing ministry, really it's not our own, it's Christ's healing ministry, we can participate in Christ's healing ministry.

We want to, as much as possible, as much as humanly possible emulate what Jesus did.

And so it's good to always start there, isn't it?

So Jesus went through Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news, proclaiming the good news of his kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

There's an excitement when people find out that you're providing especially free health programs, they get excited.

People are literally dying for lack of knowledge.

We think that most people know close to what we know, and that's just absolutely false.

Sometimes we think that we don't really know enough.

What if they ask me a question I don't know?

And that's a question I used to ask myself years ago until I realized that was a pretty egotistical question to ask, as if I'm supposed to know everything, as if I'm supposed to act like I know everything.

And so if we don't know the answer to a question, the simple thing to do is say, you know, I'm sorry, I don't know the answer to that specific question, but I will research it and I'll get back to you.

People would rather hear that than see somebody stumble through acting like they know what they're talking about when it's clear that they don't.

When I started doing a radio show about, oh, this was 12 years ago on Guam, there's a weekly call-in live radio show.

So my first, I guess, stress response to that was this very question, you know, what if somebody calls in and they ask a question and kind of puts me on the spot, until I realized that the best answer is always to be honest and say, I really don't know, but we'll get back to you.

And there's always something we do know that can complement or address other aspects of what that question is asked.

So, anytime we bring health information to the public in whatever medium, whether it's radio, TV, or especially in person, when we're doing something in their community, either from our home or from a church or from a neutral location, People are going to be excited about that.

And if they start hearing through word of mouth that we are actually doing something that works, we're promoting a program that has the latest information, but done in a holistic perspective, done within a Christian setting.

Even people who are not Christians are going to come to that.

Nedley at the break and he said that just last weekend there was 1 of our Adventist churches promoted their service in the paper to the entire community.

I mean, we don't typically do that, but why not?

And what the reason they did it, and particularly last Sabbath, was because the topic was on mental health and the Bible.

And you know that that church was completely packed to capacity from people who had never set foot in that church before.

In October, I had this burden to do something at the new church.

We just moved from the mission field a year ago from Guam after being there for 14 years, and I had this burden to do something for the Fallbrook Church.

As I mentioned earlier, it's a destination church.

It's a church that's right between Fallbrook.

In fact, it's further away from Fallbrook than it is from Temecula, because it's just literally right next to the 15 freeway.

There's no community to speak of next to it.

So I just burden, especially as I listen to the preacher preach, Dr.

Or Pastor Gerald Jones who's a fabulous retired chaplain, African-American chaplain in the military.

And he was challenging us to use The gifts that God has given us, the talents that God has given us to reach the people who have not been reached through traditional means.

There's a lot of people that have not been reached through our traditional approaches, through our typical evangelistic series.

In fact, what got me thinking about this is I went to an evangelistic series at our own church in Fallbrook.

There was about 15 people there, and I don't even know if there was anybody from the community at all.

It was just kind of the church members who wanted to support the pastor doing the evangelism.

That really affected me that we're wasting so much energy with so little return.

And this really brings us back to this model, what we call the ministry of healing model of health evangelism.

My father, who's now a retired professor emeritus from Andrews University in the field of religious education, his passion has always been how to effectively teach, how to effectively educate in the realm of religion and spirituality.

He was actually at an Amen Conference, 1 of the first, it wasn't an official Amen Conference, it was the first gathering together of setting up the Amen Program, the organization itself.

And Mark Finley, the evangelist Mark Finley was speaking.

He says, we have to come up with a new model of evangelism.

I mean he's like the premier, certainly at that time was the premier evangelist in our church.

And he's saying, our current models are not working.

My dad was there and he'd been praying and thinking about this whole issue.

And so collectively, we felt challenged by Pastor Finley himself, who I just spoke with yesterday in fact, or 2 days ago, that to put together a more truly holistic ministry of healing model.

So, if you look at the Ministry of Healing or Health and Happiness, whatever version you have of that, it goes beyond the biologic approaches of natural remedies that we typically address, right?

And that's not to in any way discount or minimize the importance of those 8 natural remedies.

Those are well-founded and well-discussed in the Ministry of Healing, But the nutrition, exercise, water, sunlight, temperance or self-discipline, air and rest are only 7 out of really 21 or more factors that are very specifically addressed at length in the Ministry of Healing.

And so there's essentially 2 additional dimension besides the biologic dimension, or what we typically refer to as the body dimension.

We also have the mind-spirit dimension, which of course Dr.

Nedley has championed and provided so many good tools for us to use in our own practices, to use in our churches and so forth.

But those dimensions are looking at the inner strength, the joy of service, forgiveness, which we'll touch on in a little bit, trust, spirituality, hope, brainpower, the command center, the importance of that frontal lobe and willful, intentional action, making choices based on decisions that are options to us.

And then we look at the relational, social dimension that is very much discussed in the Ministry of Healing but not frequently addressed in the health evangelism context and that is appreciation, the power of appreciation in influencing people for God.

The priorities of family, which is for those of us to become passionate in the health field, we can very easily get out of balance and start not meeting the needs of our own family, which is our primary responsibility.

And of course, this is the same problem that the world has.

With their crazy out of balance schedule, driving an hour to work and back, and the kids, and the spousal relationships are suffering greatly.

There needs to be a priority brought back to family time for the entire world.

And then how effective communication, dealing with crisis, facing crisis.

We are on the verge in this world of horrific crisis.

We need to be personally ready for it, but we also need to be ready to address it with people who are hurting, who are going through crisis even as we speak.

Social networking, close ties or commitment, and then how to resolve problems.

So those are really the 21 areas that are synergistic.

In fact, you take 1 factor away from this formula, from this model, and every single area will suffer because of it.

And likewise, if there is several of these areas obviously missing or lacking, by introducing and bringing those back into our lifestyle, that can dramatically improve the other areas also.

We talked during Sabbath School a little bit about the smoking cessation realm, and how when, What do we do for people who are trying to quit smoking, besides the quick fix areas of prescription?

Which really don't work that great as we know.

I mean, they maybe double the effectiveness, but That's not all that great.

So how do we really meet the needs of that person?

By addressing each 1 of these factors, meeting their needs through addressing each factor, that will fortify, that will improve the ability of that person to no longer be drawn away, captivated by that need for nicotine or whatever that addiction might be.

So there's this synergy that is discussed in the ministry of healing.

So let's keep reading the, on Matthew 4, verse 24.

When we do programs like this, and I guess my point earlier was that we brought in, like I said, over 200 people in less than a week's notice.

Just 2 little ads in the local paper, boom, they came in.

If you have a program that's well thought through, that can be presented with boldness, with authority.

That we have the information here, but we also have, as Dr.

The Application of Truly Wholistic Lifestyle Medicine

Transcript

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