AMEN 2011: Center of Influence

AMEN 2011 Breakout Seminars

Nicolae Dan

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network (AMEN)

Sanitariums Thrive as Centers of Influence, Part 1

We got involved in this kind of work about 11 years ago, and ever since we had a rollercoaster experience.

Actually, when I got married to my wife, I promised her that it won't be a regular kind of life.

She was not getting to marry the regular physician and I guess I kept my promise.

As we were starting the work, we've been greatly encouraged by statements like this, the establishment of sanitariums for the care of the sick and the suffering is just as necessary in Europe as in America.

And establishment of sanitariums in the European countries.

In this work, the most perplexing questions will arise, but from the light given me, institutions will be established which, though at first small, will by God's blessing become larger and stronger.

And then in a letter in 1900s, letter 15, Sister White writes, 25 years ago the Lord revealed to me, so this happened in 1875, that the best way in which to reach the higher classes is through our sanitariums.

This institution ought to be located away from the cities and ought to be surrounded with land enough to enable fruit and produce to be grown.

But if somebody thinks that only rich people come to such a program or this program reaches just rich people, he might be wrong.

This is a picture which I showed last year also.

We have here, we just happened to be in the same session, 5 mayors, 1 of him was a mayor from a major city in Romania and Looks like you want me both, okay And then Okay And then?

So in this picture you have the 5 mayors, but we don't have only rich people coming to the program.

Sanitarian work is 1 of the most successful means of reaching all classes of people.

The truth for this time, the third angel's message is to proclaim with loud voice as we approach the great final test.

This test must come to the churches in connection with true medical missionary work.

And I just recently came across, I was given some sermons by Kellogg.

I don't know how many of you read that material.

All those who want to have that material, you just give the email and I'll send those materials to you.

It seems like at that time Kellogg was converted.

At least this is what Sister Wyatt said about him.

And in the introduction to that material, I found this statement written by those who put together those materials.

To employ a military analogy, it may be that we have made a mistake of trying to win the greatest war of all time by using only the air force.

Altitude gives safety and a detachment from the mud and blood down below.

But perhaps, in addition to the proclamations of those flying in the midst of heaven, we will find that victory is impossible without an army and boots on the ground.

And it was just such an army that Kellogg was trying to mobilize.

Actually, I thought that this is the situation just in Eastern Europe, where because the situation, we had to camp ourself within the walls of our own church and kind of defend ourselves and that created a sort of artificial society club in which Adventists enjoyed to be, you know, middle-class, no smoking, non-alcohol and kind of, you know, removed from from the problems of the real world.

And it's very interesting to find that this is not only the experience of the post-communist society, but it looks like this is something which the Church deals even here in the United States.

So I thought it was interesting, this idea, and the fact that Kellogg was really a visionary.

Back then, more than 100 years ago, he saw this and he proposed a plan.

And Dave Fidler says that it was just such an army that Keller was trying to mobilize.

So I hope by just throwing in this statement, I just set the stage for what we want to present.

We want first to review the history of Hergelia.

Actually, it's the Review of God's Providence, because the setting was not conducive at all.

Actually, almost everybody we talked to, no matter where they came from, outside the church or inside the church, they thought that this is not going to work in Romania.

This is the same ideas we circulate in the United States about this kind of work we found in Romania.

And so you will see God's providence, how he led step by step.

And then on the second part, and probably this will be in the second hour, we'll discuss about some of dynamics at Hergelia, some practical questions.

And we will try to have some time or enough time for all the questions and to have this discussion after we present the material.

And then thirdly we would like to present some of the impacts, some of the results we have, both on the scientific end and also on the spiritual human level.

Because my sister is here with me, she was involved in this project even before I got born.

I asked her to talk to us about the history of this project.

And I will turn the mic to her right now.

It is very nice to be able to share with you.

It became the focus of my life for many, many years and it's wonderful to see that other people are interested in the sanitarium work.

It is so interesting that medical missionary work works not just today, it worked always.

It worked in Jesus' time, and it worked in the time when my father was in college.

He was given the wrong medication, and he was very sick, and a colleague from his class invited him home.

He happened to be on Seventh Day Adventist, Missionary minded, missionary minded.

His parents gave him the book, Counsels on Diet and Food to Read.

And he followed the counsels and he got well.

And this determined my father to become a seven-day Adventist.

It is very difficult in Romania to change your religion from Orthodox church and he had his share of problems and difficulties, But he loved Jesus.

He started reading the Bible, memorizing the Bible.

Everything that was written in spirit of prophecy he read.

Of course, when he treasured his book, Counselors on Diet and Food, then he was determined to read everything that was written by Ellen White.

He would get up every morning 1 hour before his necessary time to get ready to go to work and he would study the Bible and pray.

I was small and he always talked to us about Dr.

Kellogg, about Battle Creek, about a different way of diet and nutrition and healing the sick.

And our home became like a small sanitarium.

People that were in need, they knew there is an open door at our house.

And I remember that my father's desire, big desire was to have a sanitarium in Romania.

And he worked, he didn't wait for the opportunity, the doors to open, communists to fall.

He started helping people, talking to people, and especially in our home.

I know that I wanted to be a physician very much.

Every physician I met or pharmacist, I would ask questions and people had no knowledge about nutrition.

I'm so happy that in my country now they started teaching nutrition and my brother is involved with this great opportunity to influence how nutrition is going to be looked at in Romania.

Communism was very powerful and when father was telling us that communism is going to fail, it was kind of difficult to believe.

But father was a man of faith and he knew from the prophecies that he's going to fall.

And he prayed intensely that God will open the doors for a sanitarium in Romania and that his children will be involved with the sanitarium.

And God answered his prayer because in his grace God lead us this way to be involved with his work in Romania.

It is so interesting that a small institution of the capacity of 50 patients has such a big impact on the whole country and Europe.

We had no idea that whole Europe knows about Hergelia.

And then in the last years when we received many calls from many countries to help them to start the sanitarium, I was amazed how known this small institution is all over Europe.

We have patients from England, from Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, from everywhere.

And we are very happy because, I don't know if you know, I was so happy when I came across, in the spirit of prophecy, a statement where a sanitarium is called a citadel.

And you know that marriage and Sabbath is called also citadel.

And I believe now from experience that it is a citadel, is a light that shines everywhere.

People are calling Hergelia from the beginning.

And I was surprised because we, there are just a few days passed and people start talking to us.

And I was surprised because we, there just a few days passed and people start talking to us, this is a corner of heaven, I don't want to go home, I feel so good, I found something that I never found in this atmosphere, general atmosphere of Romania, this corner of heaven.

George Guthrie

Spiritual Mission and Medical Institutions

The concept of a medical missionary is 1 that I think we all have a grasp of, but I'm not sure that it's really clear in all our minds and maybe there's some room to grow.

When I was early in my career, I had someone tell me that unless I was working in a lifestyle center, I was not following the Lord's plan.

And I think that was an incorrect, if you will, statement.

As I've gone through life and matured, I have come to see that health ministry, helping people, is really reflecting of God's character.

And I am privileged as a physician to be able to make a living doing something that really is helping people or reflecting God's character.

My family has been involved with Seventh-day Adventist health institutions for a long time.

My grandfather had the opportunity of building 2 of them.

He built Castle Memorial in Hawaii and the other 1 I don't remember.

My father went as a missionary to Youngberg Memorial Hospital in Singapore.

And I did some growing up there, and that was, of course, the Mission Hospital.

And of course, medical school, and since then, has left me first in Guam Clinic, then back to Loma Linda University, up to Sonora, and then at the Lifestyle Center of America, and now finally at Florida Hospital.

Our focus today has to do with spiritual mission and medical institutions.

It's sometimes understood a bit affrontive and maybe even inappropriate to speak to people about spiritual things.

The science is beginning to help us with these things.

Maybe you've heard the term whole person care.

Family medicine has had this as a part of their kind of universe for quite some time.

So we talk about whole person care, That includes the spiritual, does it not?

Some interesting, in reviewing for this particular talk, I found an interesting article that simply reviewed the number of articles in the scientific literature on spirituality and health.

And they see a significant increase through time.

Religion and spirituality in biomedical journals, the number of those articles is increasing rather quickly.

We see churches addressing health issues.

Those of us here in the room know that the Seventh-day Adventists have done that for 100 years plus.

But other churches are now finding this an important part of their ministry.

And so that's another overlap, if you will, between spiritual care and health care.

And I've mentioned here the American Academy of Family Physicians and their encouragement.

Now the strongest, this is fascinating to me as I was researching this, the strongest correlation from kind of this spiritual arena is decreased risk of dying from church attendance.

And church attendance, it seems to be fairly strong.

Weekly attendance at religious services decreased the risk of dying.

The relative risk was a 36% reduction, and you can see the confidence intervals there.

When they adjusted for social support and health practices, it was still quite a significant drop of around 25%.

If you looked at women, it was even stronger there at 34%.

Reduction, no, get this right, decreased risk of dying, decreased risk in dying.

And several studies have looked at this, just simply going to church.

So I suppose that makes it a legitimate part of our history, doesn't it?

Do you go to church or services on a regular basis?

Simply going to church makes a difference.

A survey of 20, 000 Americans, by the way, in this area of religiousness and health, there are no double-blind, randomized, controlled studies.

I mean, those are impossible to do, right?

So we have to deal more with observations to understand this.

This is a religious involvement in the US adult mortality reported in 1999.

So it's not new, but a survey of 20, 000 Americans, huge.

7 years longer with regular church attendance, and in Blacks, 14 years longer.

So church is making a significant difference.

Now, in those that never attend church, the risk of dying was increased 50%.

So there is a spiritual dimension that affects health.

And again, this regular worship is the strongest 1.

Older worshippers, 557 adults over 6 years, reduced risk of 78 percent, again an odds ratio compared to non-attendants.

And it seemed to be, at least a significant portion of it, those who went to church on a regular basis had decreased serum interleukin-6 levels.

So looking for kind of biological mechanisms, if you will, And not necessarily knowing for sure, but at least getting some clues.

And this is kind of a review of the literature done by Koenig and some others.

Mental health and substance abuse seems to be better in people who have religious involvement.

Social health and quality of life, positive health behaviors, that is not smoking, not drinking too much.

More disease screening in people who go to church on a regular basis or are involved religiously.

Continuity of care is better, regular follow-up.

There are fewer surgical complications than those who go to church regularly, and use of health services.

As I understand, this is a regular use of health services.

Improved endocrine and immune function, lower blood pressure, less coronary artery obstruction, less carotid atherosclerosis, improved survival rates, and increase in positive human traits, forgiveness, gratitude, meaning, purpose, optimism, hope, altruism, all of these associated with.

So we have permission to talk to our patients about spiritual things.

Now, religious beliefs influence a lot of things that we do in medicine.

Chemotherapy, decisions about what are we going to do about this cancer treatment, a person's spiritual perspective comes into play with that.

So that is a legitimate place to bring it up.

How your patient feels about end of life issues ends up being really important.

Advanced directives, kind of in the same realm, and then really end of life care.

All of these have spiritual religious influences.

Now, religion is not good for everything.

Religion tends to worsen, and these are from the literature.

There are many fewer of these than there is the benefits.

But Those who are religious have a worse problem with obsessive compulsive disorder if they live in Italy.

Risk of breast cancer among women raised in religious homes in California Tended to be a little higher.

Control of diabetes is worse in those who go to church regularly.

Muslims in lead, that's in the United Kingdom.

And then survival rates after hospital discharge in patients without religious struggles, or with religious struggles in North Carolina.

And apparently some sort of religious struggle in the life can make things a little bit worse.

So again, religion is a part of our health.

So when we come to the hospital setting, to the even outpatient clinical setting.

But in this kind of organizational structure, how do we go about addressing the spiritual dimensions of folks?

My interest has been in lifestyle medicine.

How do I help people change their lifestyle in order to improve their health?

I appreciated, Tim, your discussion this morning about how the healing that comes from lifestyle medicine is a picture, if you will, of the salvation process.

It allows, I like to say, it allows people to experience salvation without religious baggage, okay?

So that's kind of the way I like to put it.

And so lifestyle medicine has been an important part of that focus, at least in my practice.

And I've discovered how to do it on an individual basis.

Ernestine Finley

Mark Finley

Making Your Church a Health Evangelism Center, Part 1

This afternoon we're gonna talk about how your church can become a dynamic health evangelistic center.

In the first part, I'm going to present the foundations, the biblical foundations of the Adventist health message.

And we're gonna look at that from the perspective of Genesis, from the perspective of Exodus, and on through the New Testament, and look at it through the Book of Revelation.

Here's my thesis in 1 sentence that summarizes the first presentation.

I am convinced that Seventh-day Adventist churches often do health programming, but they do not have health as part of their DNA.

You can do a scattered health program and have a nutrition class or have a stress management class.

But if you really understand the biblical foundation of health and see it as physical, mental, and spiritual wholeness, it influences everything your church does.

And so in the first presentation, we're gonna look at the biblical foundations of health.

And when I use the word health, I'm not simply using it to define physical health.

But we're looking at physical health, emotional health, we're looking at spiritual health and mental health.

We're looking at health as the holistic philosophy of life and health.

And then in the second presentation, my wife is gonna take what I've said in this foundation and say, how do you apply that to a local congregation?

How can the church become a dynamic outreach center for health and healing?

And then in the third presentation, we're gonna look at the interrelationship between the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions.

And so with the first presentation is rather technical, We look at the biblical foundations.

The second 1 we apply them and the third 1 is we look at physical, mental, and spiritual linkages.

Father in heaven, we're so thankful today for the great opportunity to explore again the message of health that you have for your people.

We're thankful that you're a God that's concerned about every aspect of our life.

Not simply what we believe, but you're concerned about our entire lifestyle.

So bless us as we study that in Christ's name, amen.

Our topic is your church, a health evangelistic center.

Have you ever sat in church, either on a Sabbath morning or a Wednesday night in church, asking yourself the question, shouldn't church be much more than this?

Have you ever sat in church and thought to yourself, Why isn't our church making the impact on the community that the New Testament church made?

Why does the church seem so anemic, so powerless to touch people and touch their real lives?

If you look at the book of Acts and the New Testament, you see God moving powerfully and lives are being transformed.

But yet at times we wonder, why is it that the church today is not making that kind of an impact?

Deep within the fabric of our society, men and women are asking questions, questions like these, who can bear our burdens?

Our life seems to be falling apart physically, mentally, spiritually, and who can bear those burdens?

Back to Menu

All Teachings

Sanitariums Thrive as Centers of Influence, Part 1

45m

Spiritual Mission and Medical Institutions

1h

Making Your Church a Health Evangelism Center, Part 1

45m

Making Your Church a Health Evangelism Center, Part 2

57m

Making Your Church a Health Evangelism Center, Part 3

1h

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 2

45m

Do You Have a Game Plan? Part 1

42m

Basic Training

42m

Lift Up Your Eyes

51m

The Life of the Saints: A Love

51m

A Perfect Bad Day

50m

The Binding of the Saints: A Pattern

44m

Sound Doctrine