Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.

AMEN Australia 2018: Healing, Surviving, Thriving

<p>Presentation given at the AMEN Australia 2018 annual conference held in Adelaide, Australia, www.amenaustralia.org.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Andrew Pennington

Sanctuary Clinic Mission Report


Let me tell you a little bit about Sanctuary Lifestyle Clinic. This is the clinic that I set up 2 years ago. You need to know the history briefly. So in 2010 or 11, I think, the first Amen conference. 10?

12 was it? Okay. I'm getting ahead of myself. It was in Melbourne and it was a wonderful conference And we had a pastor there, Pastor Dobson. Skip Dobson?

Dodson, Skip Dodson. Who knows Skip Dodson? Does anyone remember Skip Dobson from here? Yeah, okay. He presented on a number of topics, but 1 of them was on how the medical and the spiritual – sorry, the medical side and the pastoral side had kind of diverged in our church over time.

And 1 of the things that came out of that was a quote that he put up, which I've said, given to you guys before in previous concerts, and I'm going to put it up in a sec. But he showed a quote that Ellen White had mentioned, that actually Australia was going to be a place where the pattern would be re-established. And I'm going to show you because that was an inspiring point in my life. Now, around that time, I was in discussions with the Managing Director of Sanitarium, Cathy MacDonald, and they had started a clinic in Pyrmont in Sydney. And Sanitarium wanted to do a lifestyle medicine clinic and they didn't have any experience, I mean they've got plenty of experience obviously in corporate health foods, etc., but they didn't have any experience in running a health clinic.

And they advertised for positions. And how many applicants from Adventist doctors did they receive? 0. Which is a very sad indictment, but that's the reality. And so they decided, well, we'll do it anyway, and they got 3 non-adventist doctors to start their clinic.

Lovely people, nice doctors, but they didn't understand the Adventist health message. It's okay, I mean you can still run a medical clinic without understanding the Adventist health message of course. But if you're going to do a missional clinic, how likely do you think that you are going to be able to achieve the mission if you don't actually understand the mission? Pretty unlikely. And unfortunately in 2000 and I joined the clinic in 2000, about halfway in 2013.

They'd already been going for about 2 and a half years. And we tried to do some things, change a few things here and there, but Piedmont was a very difficult community to work in. The finances were difficult, And I won't go into all of the ins and outs because my intention in giving you this is not in any way to defame Sanitarium, not at all. They had a very strong desire to do this, but it's more to talk about the learnings that's happened from it. And they spent a lot of money on this clinic, and unfortunately it failed.

It closed in the beginning of 2016. And so there were some learnings to come from that. And 1 you can already appreciate is that you can't start a missional clinic without missional focused people. That's number 1. Number 2, you need to do your due diligence financially as well, and you also need to be careful about your location and not go forward ahead of the Spirit of the Lord and I think that's probably what happened in this situation.

Anyway, so I was part of this clinic and when I found out that it was going to close, of course, that I'd been there for 2 and a half years. I'd uprooted my life and my family from rural Victoria where we had a very good salary. I was doing very well as a GP obstetrician. I loved what I was doing but I felt the calling to move and I moved and I significantly reduced my salary and had massively increased expenses. So it was a difficult time but it was a good time still.

I still appreciate it. Anyway, at this point when it closed, I had a choice, and that choice was to either join a new clinic or start my own. And this kind of quote really, I think, summarizes what I passionately believe and feel we need to be doing. And you can see here what Ellen White says. We need to do more for our people in our cities.

We're not to erect large buildings in the cities, but over and over again. This is not just 1 little bit of information she received, over and over again, she was told that we should establish small centres of influence. Now, Again, I have no desire to be disparaging of what's gone in the past, but we have tended to erect very large buildings, have we not? And we have tended to continue to build them bigger and bigger, And it has not served our church well. What we need to do is small centres of influence.

There are many places that need the Gospel ministry work and there should be small plants established. Dr. Nedley talked about sanitariums. God designs our sanitarium shall be means of reaching high and low rich and poor they are to be conducted that by their work attention may be called to the message that God has sent into the world, a strong connection between the health and the gospel. And this is the quote that I want to share with you that Pastor Dodson made.

And this is in reference to the educational work and the medical missionary work. So it was both education and medical mission that this context, this quote was made. It was not God's design that the work in this country should be so hard. And she was in Australia when she made this comment. It was his purpose that shall be a true pattern in Australia, a sample of how other fields shall be worked, and the work should be symmetrical and a living witness for the truth.

So this quote hit me pretty straight in the forehead and I thought, well, I can be a part of this or not. And I thought, I need to be a part of this. So that's what led me to start my own practice. There were many hardships in starting it and many miracles. I don't have time to go through them all with you, but about 24 hours before our opening day it looked likely that I may not have had a provider number.

Now that's not very helpful for those of you who understand medicine. You kind of need to provide a number to be able to allow Medicare to give rebates to the patients. But through some very gracious circumstances and a lot of prayer, 1 came through just in time. And IT problems, printing problems, computer problems, you name it, there were problems but somehow the Lord came through and most importantly the Lord linked me with good people because you can't do this by yourself. We're not designed to do it by ourselves.

We need others to help. So, we started. A few patients who graciously waited for about 9 months from Pyrmont came to see me and I had a few patients early on, but then it petered off and I had very few patients. It was quite small, it was just me by myself and a receptionist. And then probably I hadn't really been doing the due diligence that I should have to the financial side of the practice.

And 1 day I looked at the figures a bit more closely about 11 months into the practice and I realized that the money was going to dry up pretty quick and that I was going to go bankrupt and I went oh okay that might be a problem. So my wife was possibly more worried than I was, but bless her, she is a woman of action and she is a woman with a sound mind. And she gave me some very good advice and she got very involved straight away and she has a business degree and she said, right, these are the things we're going to start to do. And we did. And we cut costs very dramatically.

We had to do a number of things. But people came and offered help. And I can say to you this verse was a very pertinent verse, and I'm sure many of you have read it before. But we're gonna have hardships in life. We're gonna have plenty of them.

And this is what God says. I mean obviously the context I guess is Isaiah prophetically saying this but he says, I formed you. Don't be afraid. I have redeemed you. I've called you by name.

So remember when God comes to you, the first thing he tells you, he reassures you of who you are in him. That's the first thing he does. He says, you are a child of mine. I bought you back. You are mine.

Then he reassures that when you're going to go through the trials, when you pass through the waters, when you pass through the rivers, when you pass through the fire, I'm going to be with you. He doesn't say to you that it's going to be, you know, you're never going to have any of those troubles. He just says, I'm going to be with you and you won't be overcome by them, whatever you trust for I am the Lord your God. Has anyone, can anyone say that that has been your experience too? You can say you've trusted the Lord.

Well, it was very, very real to me when you stare down the line of bankruptcy. I'd never, ever been in that situation in my life. Been in a very lucky situation in that I'd always been able to take care of my finances throughout life. When you stare down bankruptcy, it is not a pleasant place to be. And so, I needed to learn some humility.

I needed to learn some self-sacrifice, and I did need to learn some economic stewardship. God doesn't miraculously change finances without you thinking and carefully being stewarding of what you're given. And there was a lot of grace and providence. And Sanctuary started to expand. So we added a nutritionist, a psychologist, a naturopath and a community health educator.

And I have 4 lovely receptionists as well. And I can tell you that in the last 6 months we are making a profit. Little bit, not a lot, a little bit, but enough to get by. And this was an interesting, I remember Dr. Nedley, you were talking about the lure of riches and how sometimes when God works with us he can work more closely when we're actually poor and I was reasonably well off, I'm now poor.

All my savings are in this clinic. I have a debt of over $200, 000 to repay. I am poor, but I'm rich, and I'm rich because God is in control. And so the community health educator, Marilyn Stevenson, who is a lovely lady, she's not with us today. Unfortunately the funding for her position is going to run out very shortly.

But we need to do, extend her work. And what she was doing was, well we started a walking group in the community. So again, it's the same that Camilla was talking about. It's building bridges to the community. Walking was a great way to start and I walk with the group once a month.

I can't commit to doing it every single week, although maybe I can, but it's early on in the morning and there's other things I've got to do with children. But we do a walking group And that's developed and we've got probably about 6 to 10 people who come every week and we just chat with them and learn from them and occasionally they've come into our next thing cooking demonstrations and health programs. And very recently we've just run a depression recovery program in our clinic which was well attended and well received, and in the future perhaps Chip. But there's 1 other concept that I want to bring, and you've already heard this concept. Who has seen the movie War Room?

If you have not watched the movie War Room, you need to go and watch it. I watched it about a month ago and I knew about it but I just hadn't seen it properly and it profoundly affected me. I realised that my battles were not being fought when I was not actually knowing how to fight them properly. So we have a devotional in our clinic and it's good, there's nothing wrong with the devotional we were doing, but it possibly wasn't heartfelt enough. And I think what I realised from War Room is that we actually need to have a better targeted strategy.

So we've changed in our clinic in the last month. And what we do now is that my receptors and I, before our patients come, is we form a War Room. And we sit down with my patient list in front of me in my computer and we pray for every 1 of our patients before I see them. And within that first week of happening we had 1 of the patients already talking to my receptionist saying, tell me about your church. That took about 2 days.

When you let God work, he will work through you and he will work powerfully. And part of this of course is personal revival. I admit my time and energy and all the things it took to run this clinic from day to day and the emotional energy, the clinical energy that I put into it, it affected my personal devotions. It affected my personal time with the Lord. I needed to be woken up again and I pray that the Lord will continue to wake me up.

So in the future, how are we going to look at doing this better so that it's not just a good medical clinic? And I think that's 1 of the things that has always challenged me. And the answer, of course, is a blended ministry. And we are going to look more in the future to do some health talks and then link with spiritual talks. We're going to look to get more staff, although I need probably more patients to justify more doctors or other allied health staff.

I'm going to look for more links with lifestyle or wellness centres, i.e. Sanitariums. Eventually my goal is that this clinic, whether it's called sanctuary or not, the model is to be rolled out. And that model is not my model. That model is the Lord's model, small centres of influence.

So my challenge to you, we have need of divine illumination. Every individual is striving to become a center of influence. So it's not even corporate centers of influence. Those are very, very important. That's what I'm trying to do.

But as has been mentioned, as Camilla just actually mentioned, we are to be a center of influence ourselves. Until God works for His people, they will not see that subordination to God, sorry, that is the only safety for any soul. His transforming grace upon human hearts will lead to unity that has not yet been realized for all who are assimilated to Christ will be in harmony with 1 another and the Holy Spirit will create unity. Now I don't know about you but at the moment our church is struggling with unity. The health message is 1 of the ways that we can re-establish unity.

And I pray that we will all be centres of influence And please pray for us individually as physicians. As you've learned, we definitely need it. I need a double pouring of the Holy Spirit. We all do. And please pray for personnel.

It's the biggest issue that we're going to have. If we're going to do this kind of stuff together, we need willing personnel. We need people who are going to step up and say, you know what, I'll be a part of that. I'm actually going to be a part of it. It doesn't have to be my clinic, it doesn't have to be a sanitarium, although Those are great avenues for us to work in.

We're going to need you and we're going to need others in here because there's not enough people in this room to do the job. We need lots more. So please pray and thank you for listening and thanks for your time. This media was brought to you by AudioVerse, a website dedicated to spreading God's Word through free sermon audio and much more. If you would like to know more about AudioVerse, or if you would like to listen to more sermons, please visit www.audioverse.org

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Sanctuary Clinic Mission Report

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