Among students in the health professions, the Annual Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, Kentucky, is becoming known as the “Urbana” of healthcare missions. Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church partnered with InterVarsity’s Nurses Christian Fellowship (NCF) and seven other Christian health-related organizations to convene the 10th Annual GMHC November 11-12, 2005.
Since NCF got involved as a co-sponsor of this conference five years ago, attendance has grown from 500 to over 2,500 participants, making it a significant gathering in healthcare missions. In recent years missions leaders and healthcare professionals have used this event to advance a dialogue about healthcare and missions. Three years ago, they began coordinating a pre-conference on the topic of HIV/AIDS and the church.
This year’s pre-conference featured Edward C. Green, PhD, senior research scientist at Harvard School of Public Health, who spoke on “Uganda’s ABC Model: an African Response to AIDS” and the controversy surrounding the program emphasizing abstinence and faithfulness in marriage. Benjamin K. Homan, president of Food for the Hungry, Inc., spoke of the need for repentance in light of the HIV/AIDS crisis.
Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, challenged the North American church to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. “When Christians really understand and hear the facts, they have a complete change of heart, and the only question they have is, ‘How can we help?’” Stearns told the Louisville Courier Journal afterwards. Geoff Tunnicliffe, interim secretary general of World Evangelical Alliance, challenged missions and churches to form partnerships to effectively address the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
More than 800 people participated in the North American Consultation on the Role of the Church in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic.
The main conference heard from Tracy Goen, MD, who presented a workshop and a plenary session on his work with the Fulani people in Nigeria. He told how the Lord had used traditional medicine and veterinary medicine to reach the nomadic Fulani people with the Gospel. Christianity Today has profiled his work in a recent article entitled The Missionary King.
Steve Saint, son of martyred missionary Nate Saint, presented a workshop on “Community Based Health among the Waodoni Tribe and Other Indigenous Peoples.” He told of his experience growing up in Ecuador, his adult relationship to the indigenous people who had led him to the Lord and taught him as a child and the role that Western influence had had on the indigenous church. He challenged some of the traditional missions’ approaches to healthcare in developing countries.
The conference included 98 workshops, 90 speakers, and over 130 exhibitors. E. Dawn Swaby-Ellis, MD, presented a plenary program entitled “Beyond the Crossroads: Communication, Culture, and Caring in Medicine”. David Stevens, MD MA (Ethics), executive director of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, challenged the audience with his plenary “Dying to Win.” Aileen Coleman, MSN, NP, an Australian nurse who is the executive director of the Annoor Hospital in Jordan, and whose story is told in the book The Desert Rat, also spoke.
For more detailed information, go to the conference website. Urbana information is at urbana.org.
Nurses Christian Fellowship website
