AMEN Australia 2019 Conference: Witnesses Unto Me

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Adventist Medical Evangelism Network Australia

Glen Hughes

Andrew Jasper

Edwin Nebblett

Pam Townend

Sabbath Afternoon: Q and A


All right, anyone has any questions? Sorry, I don't think some of the students were here when you were speaking Trevor about Sonship. Can you just do a really, really quick 1 through? Just 1 second, maybe 1 minute. Okay, but what I can share is SunShip is a ministry where we're the students, we're talking over here.

I'd like to stand up. SunShip's a ministry in the Solomon Islands where we have boats. Because of all the little islands, there's no medical care there. They've had earthquakes, tsunamis through there, the years in the past. Very poor, very needy.

So we have ships. We now have 5 little boats that actually go and do monthly clinics among these islands. We have nurses that go out on these clinics and we have a Bible worker that goes with them. What we're keen to do is, from next year, we're hoping that we'll have some volunteers and ideally students who'd like to go and experience real mission work and that's right where the rubber meets the road is right there among these people and look it's going to be more of an assistant role. You're not going to be given major responsibility, but to just be part of this is going to be powerful and it can be life changing.

And we can maybe show you a quick clip if there's not many more questions just to see what it's about. Do you have an amen there? Anyone else? Any questions? Yeah, look, what I would say With Manor Haven, we've had many inquiries of people who have tried to replicate our model.

The first thing I would say is that Manor Haven is 1 of the most successful health evangelism outreaches that I've ever been involved in, but we still run at a loss of approximately $10, 000 to $15, 000 a year. I justify that by saying that if I employ a Bible worker, it will cost me $45, 000 for the year. I have Manorhaven Cafe running in my church, which has 3 Bible workers in it. That costs me $5, 000 each. It's not a money-making enterprise.

They pay no rent. The church doesn't charge them rent, so just the cost of payroll and the food is not meeting the we're not generating enough income to meet those costs. We turn over around about let me try and remember the last financials. I think we generate a profit of around about $150, 000 a year. Sorry, not a profit, a turnover of about 150 and we've probably got costs of 175, something like that, 160, 175.

Bryce, the manager that's there is just incredible in terms of his capacity to be a talented chef, a very, very, very fiscally responsible manager, and I would say that the cafe ministry is going to be absolutely dependent on the people that you have running it. People have asked us for the algorithms and the formulas, but we're in a unique position of having a rent-free space with lots of people walking by and an incredible chef and team around him that are committed to the ministry. I think that we all know that love sweats, love bleeds. Yeah, love is expensive, love is inconvenient. And these guys are really, really committed to what they do.

So I would say that if you wanna run it, you just have to recognise that it's gonna come with investment. And we're really lucky to have a team of committed businessmen who want to see it succeed, and they regularly write checks to keep it running. And if you've got that capacity in your church, it's a great model. It's a great way of meeting people in a non-offensive way and really pushing our health beliefs and our systems out there, but it doesn't come without some real serious challenges in terms of making it profitable. Glenn, I've got a question.

So how do you minister to the customers that come through to spread the gospel? I think everybody who's involved in ministry will be able to resonate with this. I don't think there's a formula. I think if you've got committed Christians who wake up in the morning and pray to be agents of the Holy Spirit, the most remarkable things happen. And we have a team of committed missionaries running that place.

And they just find that just by being friendly and being interested in people, conversations start that sometimes end up in a place where people ask about God. It's in a church, so it's kind of self-explanatory. So We probably aren't deliberate or intentional in trying to be overt in our evangelism, but people in that particular area, and particularly the tourists that are coming through Byron, all are mostly on a quest, and there is a real spiritual interest and we don't win every single 1 of them but God always gives us enough interest to keep all of those who are willing and able to be involved in evangelism as busy as they can be. Can I just ask a question? Trevor and Glenn can decide between them how much of each they want to answer.

But thinking back to the breakout session and talking about people feeling cared for and sometimes two-minute medicine doesn't really fit into that. And when you're in a really busy place where others think that productivity is measured by seeing 50 people in a day, and you're not as productive when somebody sees a kind face and starts crying on the way out the door or something like that. It's really, I find that really challenging, balancing that, and I'm sure I'm not the only 1, and trying to balance the angst of the practice at you running late versus meeting the need of the patient in front of you. What are your main tips on approaching that? I think I'll go first.

I'm just deliberate in adding 10 minutes to every appointment time. And I let my patients know that I give them 10 minutes for free. You know, there's just chatting time, there's just human interaction. And my nursing staff just last week used some rather expletive swear words to say how everyone in the practice is so frustrated that I'm always talking to people. And yet, at the same time as expressing that frustration, it was a backhanded compliment that the insistence of patients when they ring up that they wanna see me and not another dentist in the practice is a direct consequence that they feel like they're valued as a human being before they're valued as a business asset.

Everybody's personality is different, Antoinette, and I think that all committed Christians are going to face exactly the problem that you had, is that we don't just see people as KPIs or as business figures. They're not just financial assets in a medical enterprise. They're people and they have stories and we want to engage with them. So, yeah, I just deliberately build it into my time when I go to the appointment book. You send other people work.

Yeah, yeah. And I think dentistry is easier than medicine because bulk billing only works if you're time efficient. Dentistry, we just, yeah, we, anyway, I've already expressed my difficulty at the whole kind of capitalist model, but there's enough, I think there's enough time between giving an anaesthetic and actually starting a procedure and letting people decontaminate the surgery and get things wiped down, that if you get into the system, you can place that value on human relationships. It costs and it's expensive, But at the end of the day, it brings such loyalty and commitment that when other people are struggling to keep their chair full, you've got loyal patients referring their friends and in a sense, I think that if you do medicine and dentistry the way God wants you to do it, you'll always have clientele. I guess I mean partly in a setting where you feel like you're letting your colleagues down because they're seeing 50 a day and there's always too many to see and stuff like that.

But you're right and thank you. Antoinette, I identify with Christ. He had likened it to the Kings Cross ER on a Saturday night because Christ would be inundated with whole towns of sick people and needy people. But when we read in the scriptures, you read that he touched, physically touched everyone. Now he could have just spoken a word and everyone would have been healed and he could have moved on.

But there was that personal interest in every person where he actually physically touched them and you read it, we read it in our group this afternoon. And yeah, I'm not the model, really. Like you, I sometimes can see 70, sometimes 80, well, I wouldn't, I shouldn't even mention that, ridiculous numbers of people and sometimes 12 hour days. And yes, sometimes it's very quick, you know, you, I think just the spirit that you meet people, you know, you're not hurried, you know, you're willing to listen, you're willing to help. Sometimes it can be very quick and there are times when you're not trying to pray with them or do something like that.

But as you perceive need, sometimes I will then bring people back and say, look, we're going to focus on this now. We need to spend more time. And then allow a longer visit so that then we can spend more time. But I think people know whether you're really interested, whether you're really passionate. And in my room, I've got a clock that says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

There's a poster next to the bed that the patients lie on with a big hand and names on it, and it says, God has you in the palm of his hand. And I'm quite amused. Sometimes I'll go out and come back and I'll see patients quickly taking a photo or I'll see kids asking their mother, what does that mean? And hearing mothers trying to explain it to their kids. So sometimes just the environment you're in can be a conversation starter.

But I think people can sense whether you genuinely love them and care about them. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn and Trevor for sharing. And indeed, the theme is Witnesses Unto Me, and we can be silent witnesses as well, and we can really show the compassion of Christ to every patient that we come in contact with. I think we've come to a time where we thank you so much for the breakout sessions and the questions and answers that we have.

And we are close to having dinner. The dinner will be on that side, but before that, we would like to invite Paul Rankin to say a prayer for us. Thank you very much, Lord. It's been fascinating today hearing different people's journey, different people's stories, different people's struggles. Thank you for the ability to share that.

Thank you for the responsibility that you give each 1 of us, Lord, to be citizens of your kingdom and to share that. Please show us where you want us to go, Lord, and give us the courage to follow. Be with us now as we head to dinner. Thank you for the food we're about to partake of. For Jesus' sake, amen.

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