The purest goal of any spiritual outreach is to help develop people so that they can reach others in their communities with the Good News of Jesus Christ and the salvation that He brings for all mankind.  While it is certainly important to evangelize and disciple the people that we work with, we eventually want to see them go out and become “fishers of men” just as Jesus did with his disciples.  I’d like to share some stories of how this has been happening in our medical missions lately.

Every 2 weeks, our clinic has a luncheon for the ladies, who in fact represent most of our clinic staff.  The staff take turns leading the conversations during this time, and last week, it was Anya’s* turn to lead.  She is one of our nurses, and she brought a video by US pastor Max Lucado, which had been translated into our local language.  The video explained how all God’s people are special.  Anya spoke to the ladies to continue this message and personalize it for them.  She was not “preaching to the choir” as not everyone present at the meeting was a believer.

For the past year now, one of the residents from a local medical school has continued to do clinical rotations at our clinic even though the requirement is only for 2 months.  She is a believer and feels called by God to be a missionary.  I recently spoke to her about the need to be intentional in preparing to become a missionary.  As part of that training, I challenged her to be the coordinator for the short-term missions opportunities sponsored by our clinic.

It has been a goal for quite some time that our clinic would have a full-time Christian counselor.  Now, after a year of formal training, our former Human Resources Director Lysa* has begun accepting counseling patients at our clinic.  One of the first things that she has done is to offer counseling sessions to all the family medicine residents who rotate through our clinic.  She speaks with them about calling, purpose and meaning in their lives.  While she is not directive in her counseling, Lysa challenges them to consider that there is more to life than having a career and earning money.

Long ago a mature Christian once told me the following story:  Suppose that I were to be the best evangelist in the world, and I could successfully reach 10,000 people with the saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, day after day.  How long would it take me to reach the world with the Gospel message?

The answer?  Never.  More than 10,000 people are born (and die) every day.  By myself I could never keep up.  And if I were the only one, I would in fact be losing ground in spreading the Kingdom of God!

Now, suppose that I dedicate just one year of my life to discipling two people.  During that year, I not only lead them to become faithful followers of Jesus Christ, but I also prepare them to share their faith with others.  And then at that point I end my ministry and never contribute anything more for the rest of my life.

But those two people now each accept two new disciples and achieve the same goals over the following year.  And then those four go on to double their ranks to eight, and so on and so forth.  How long would it take to reach the world for Jesus Christ?

The answer?  Because of the exponential power of two, the entire population of the world would be reached in just 33 years (in other words, within our lifetime!)

“Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”  -Isaiah 44:8 (NIV)