How you can help grow Christian doctors worldwide

In July 2014 over 1,000 Christian doctors and medical students from over 60 countries will meet in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for the 15th WorldCongress of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association (ICMDA).

Our aim is to help key students and junior doctors from resource-poor parts of Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa to attend.

Previous world congresses have played a major role in establishing Christian medical fellowships all over the world as well as encouraging and equipping thousands of individual Christian doctors and students to live and speak for Jesus Christ.

Dr Alex Bolek (right) is a young South Sudanese doctor who was helped with travel and registration for the last World Congress in Uruguay 2010. Today he is a key player in a major Sudanese mission project to develop an Institute of Health Sciences to train healthcare workers in the Nile river town of Bor about two hours' drive north of the Capital Juba. The project is a joint venture between ICMDA, the Health Ministry of South Sudan and the Anglican Church. Training is scheduled to start in June 2014.

500 Euros (£420) will fund one doctor or medical student for the whole week in Rotterdam with accommodation provided free through host-families. A stringent selection process (that includes feedback from national associations and leaders) is in place to ensure that the right candidates get the bursary.

The total target is $150,000 (~£95,000) and we are aiming to raise just over 20% of that (£20,000) from CMF UK members and others in the UK. We have chosen this target because ICMDA relies on CMF UK, as one of the largest of its 70 national member organisations, for about 21% of its general income.

This is a wonderful opportunity to invest in ICMDA's dream of 'a Christian medical witness in every community, in every country'.

Please give generously and help us hit the target so that more like Alex can benefit

The 4/14 Window – probably the world’s most strategic mission field

Most mission-minded Christians have heard of the 10/40 window (left) - the geographical region between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator - where most people unreached by the Gospel live.

But far fewer it seems have heard of the 4/14 window - the world of children between the ages of 4 and 14. Overall about one third of the world’s population is below the age of 15 years - in parts of Africa and Asia it is 40-50%.

The term was introduced in a 1996 publication by Dan Brewster, then program director for Compassion International.  He highlighted research by Bryant Myers, who showed that ‘85% of those who become Christians do so between the ages of 4 and 14 years old’.

A person’s life-long behaviours and beliefs are generally developed during childhood and early adolescence. In the overwhelming majority, moral and spiritual foundations are in place by age nine.

Fundamental perspectives on truth, integrity, meaning, justice, morality, and ethics are formed at this early stage of life.

It is therefore vital to reach children while they are young and equip them to make an impact throughout their lives.  Children are the most receptive to the gospel, and positioned to be a mighty force to bring others to faith in Christ. Children have their whole lives ahead of them to live out and share their faith, and they also have time to be long-term agents of change.

In September 2009 more than 300 international Christian leaders met at the 4/14 Window Global Summit in New York. The gathering was called by AD2000 and Beyond Movement founder Luis Bush, a renowned missiologist.

The 4/14 Window movement spawned by this event is still going and a host of resources are available on line (see below)

In October 2010, just over a year later, I was privileged to be amongst 4,000 Christian leaders from more than 200 countries attending The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa.

Through discussions and prayer, participants sought God’s direction to discern where the Church should invest its efforts and energies to most effectively respond to Jesus’ command to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’(Matthew 28:19).

The Cape Town Commitment: A Confession of Faith and a Call to Action was one result. In Part 2 Section 5 it highlights the strategic nature of Children’s ministry:

‘Children and young people are the Church of today, not merely of tomorrow. Young people have great potential as active agents in God’s mission. They represent an enormous under-used pool of influencers with sensitivity to the voice of God and a willingness to respond to him. We rejoice in the excellent ministries that serve among and with children, and long for such work to be multiplied since the need is so great. As we see in the Bible, God can and does use children and young people – their prayers, their insights, their words, their initiatives – in changing hearts. They represent “new energy” to transform the world. Let us listen and not stifle their childlike spirituality with our adult rationalistic approaches.’

The section concludes in a call to action to:

‘take children seriously, through fresh biblical and theological enquiry that reflects on God’s love and purpose for them and through them’ and to seek to train people and provide resources to meet the needs of children worldwide, wherever possible working with their families and communities…’

The Bible calls us to ‘Start children off on the way they should go’ promising that ‘even when they are old they will not turn from it’ (Proverbs 22:6). 

Jesus called children to himself (Mark 10:14) and warned about leading them astray (Mathew 18:5,6). One of the most important passages in the Old Testament emphasises the importance of teaching children to love and honour God:

‘These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.’ (Deuteronomy 6:6,7)

Children are the future and today’s 4 to 14 year olds will be the leaders of the church in just a few decades time. Let’s make them a priority in our churches and communities.

4/14 Window Resources

4/14 Window Movement

4/14 YouTube Video

4/14 Window Movement Facebook Page

European Evangelical Alliance brochure

4/14 Global Summit – Bangkok 15-18 October 2013

Global 4/14 Day – 14 April 2014

Meditations on the Life of Adoniram Judson

If you have not yet discovered John Piper’s biographies then I heartily recommend them. They can all be downloaded free of charge from the Desiring God website and are great for car or train journeys, walks and runs.

I have listened to most of them several times and always pick up new gems along the way. Piper puts a huge amount of time into preparation going to primary source material, so unless you are a scholar of Christian biography you will almost certainly find new encouragements in them.

Today, on a long run, I listened again to his talk on Adoniram Judson. The full version is available on line but I have cut and pasted some of the main points below.

Meditations on the Life of Adoniram Judson

What overwhelms me, as I ponder this and trace the life of Adoniram Judson, America's first foreign missionary, is how strategic it was that he died so many times and in so many ways.

More and more I am persuaded from Scripture and from the history of missions that God's design for the evangelization of the world and the consummation of his purposes includes the suffering of his ministers and missionaries. To put it more plainly and specifically, God designs that the suffering of his ministers and missionaries is one essential means in the joyful triumphant spread of the gospel among all the peoples of the world.

When Adoniram Judson entered Burma in July, 1813 it was a hostile and utterly unreached place. William Carey had told Judson in India a few months earlier not to go there. It probably would have been considered a closed country today - with anarchic despotism, fierce war with Siam, enemy raids, constant rebellion, no religious toleration. All the previous missionaries had died or left.

But Judson went there with his 23-year-old wife of 17 months. He was 24 years old and he worked there for 38 years until his death at age 61, with one trip home to New England after 33 years. The price he paid was immense. He was a seed that fell into the ground and died.

Today there are close to about 3,700 congregations of Baptists in Myanmar who trace their origin to this man's labors of love.

1. The invincible purpose of God is that ‘the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:4) spread to all the peoples of the world and take root in God-centered, Christ-exalting churches.

This great global vision of the Christian movement becomes clear and powerful and compelling in pastors' lives whenever there is Biblical awakening in Christ's people - as there was among many in the first decades of the 1800s when Adoniram Judson was converted and called into missions along with hundreds of others as the light and power of truth awakened the churches.

2. God's plan is that this gospel-spreading, church-planting purpose triumph through the suffering of his people, especially his ministers and missionaries.

I don't just mean that suffering is the consequence of obedient missions. I mean that suffering is one of Christ's strategies for the success of his mission.

Suffering was not just a consequence of the Master's obedience and mission. It was the central strategy of his mission. It was the ground of his accomplishment. Jesus calls us to join him on the Calvary road, to take up our cross, and to hate our lives in this world, and fall into the ground like a seed and die, that others might live. We are not above our Master. To be sure, our suffering does not atone for anyone's sins, but it is a deeper way of doing missions than we often realize.

In his sufferings Paul is ‘filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for . . . the church.’ Not that Paul's sufferings atone for sin or propitiate wrath or vindicate divine justice in passing over sins, but they show the unreached peoples of the world the sufferings of Christ. When Paul shares Christ's sufferings with joy and love, he delivers, as it were, those very sufferings to the ones for whom Christ died. Paul's missionary suffering is God's design to complete the sufferings of Christ, by making them more visible and personal and precious to those for whom he died.

3. The position we are in now at the beginning of the 21st century is one that cries out for tremendous missionary effort and great missionary sacrifice.

Patrick Johnstone says in ‘Operation World’ that only in the 1990s did we get a reasonably complete listing of the world's peoples. For the first time we can see clearly what is left to be done. There are about 12,000 ethnolinguistic peoples in the world. About 3,500 of these have, on average, 1.2% Christian populations - about 20 million of the 1.7 billion people, using the broadest, nominal definition of Christian.1 Most of these least reached 3,500 peoples are in the 10/40 window and are religiously unsympathetic to Christian missions. That means that that we must go to these peoples with the gospel, and it will be dangerous and costly. Some of us and some of our children will be killed.

My question is, if Christ delays his return another two hundred years - a mere fraction of a day in his reckoning - which of you will have suffered and died so that the triumphs of grace will be told about one or two of those 3,500 peoples who are in the same condition today that the Karen and Chin and Kachins and Burmese were in 1813? Who will labor so long and so hard and so perseveringly that in two hundred years there will be two million Christians in many of the 10/40-window peoples who can scarcely recall their Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist roots?

4. The pain of Adoniram Judson illustrates all we've seen so far.

Adoniram Judson ‘hated his life in this world’ and was a ‘seed that fell into the ground and died.’ In his sufferings ‘he filled up what was lacking in Christ's afflictions’ in unreached Burma. Therefore his life bore much fruit and he lives to enjoy it today and forever. He would, no doubt, say: It was worth it.

His father, who was a Congregationalist pastor in Massachusetts, had studied with Jonathan Edwards' student Joseph Bellamy, and Adoniram inherited a deep belief in the sovereignty of God. The great importance this has for my purpose here is to stress that this deep confidence in God's overarching providence through all calamity and misery sustained him to the end. He said, ‘If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.’

At 15 minutes after 4 on Friday afternoon April 12, 1850 Adoniram Judson died at sea, away from all his family and Burmese Church… ten days later his third wife Emily (his previous wives Ann and Sarah had died on missionary service) gave birth to their second child who died at birth. She learned four months later that her husband was dead. She returned to New England that next January and died of tuberculosis three years later at the age of 37.

The Bible was done. The dictionary was done. Hundreds of converts were leading the church. And today there are close to about 3,700 congregations of Baptists in Myanmar who trace their origin to this man's labors of love.

5. And so, in closing, I make my final plea.

Life is fleeting, brothers. In a very short time we will all give an account before Jesus Christ, not only as to how well we have shepherded our flock, but how well we have obeyed the command to make disciples of all nations.

Many of the peoples of the world are without any indigenous Christian movement today. Christ is not enthroned there, his grace is unknown there, and people are perishing with no access to the gospel. Most of these hopeless peoples do not want you to come. At least they think they don't. They are hostile to Christian missions. Today this is the final frontier….

The question, brothers, is not whether we will die, but whether we will die in a way that bears much fruit.

More resources on Adoniram Judson

Other short biographies on this blog site:

William Wilberforce
David Brainerd
Charles Simeon

Richard Stearns’ huge Lausanne challenge to the church of America about its attitude to wealth, poverty and power applies equally to us in the UK

The churches in the more prosperous northern hemisphere, in particular, need to return to the gospel of Christ. That gospel is not just about individual salvation, but a life transformation that results in compassion, service and a striving for justice.

This was the message that Richard Stearns, President of World Vision United States, brought in what I thought was one of the defining events of the Cape Town 2010 Lausanne Congress on 24 October. He argues that there is ‘a hole’ in our Gospel.

The video is only 15 minutes long but worth every second. Share it with your friends, show it in your house groups and churches and help spread this message right from the heart of God.

You can watch the whole address on line but I have excerpted some of the highlights below to whet your appetite.

For a much fuller treatment of the underlying issues you can read Richard’s new book (2010 Christian book of the year!), ‘The Hole in our Gospel’.

The full title says it all, ‘The Hole in Our Gospel: What does God expect of Us? The Answer that Changed my Life and Might Just Change the World’.

Wealth, Poverty and Power - The Hole in our Gospel (transcript)

‘When Jesus read the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue at Nazareth he proclaimed the stunning truth that he was the Messiah and that he had come to preach the good news to the poor, the good news that man could be reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of his Son. But Jesus did not stop there at proclamation. He also spoke of restoring sight for the blind, freeing the captives and oppressed, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favour. It was a reference to the year of Jubilee instituted by God to promote economic justice and to prevent economic exploitation and disparity.

Jesus described a big Gospel, a Gospel that began with proclamation and evangelism, yes, but also embraced compassion toward our fellow man and biblical justice – proclamation, compassion and justice – you see these three defined the good news of Jesus Gospel. These three were the coming signs of Jesus coming on earth. These three were the revolutionary truths that would change the world as we know it and help us claim it for Christ.

The whole Gospel makes demands upon the rich and the poor that go beyond belief. This whole Gospel means a total surrender to God’s kingdom, not just believing the right things but doing the right things as well.

We are called to care for the widow, the orphan, the alien and the stranger. We’re called to lift up justice and fight economic disparity; to speak up for the voiceless and to hold our governments accountable; to challenge racism and bigotry; to be generous with our money and to live lives of integrity before a watching world.

The most powerful evangelism of all involves not just speaking the good news but being the good news. Not just preaching the Gospel but demonstrating the Gospel because love for our neighbours that is only spoken is not love at all. You see love must be demonstrated.

This radical gospel of love, word and deed was intended by Jesus to launch a social and spiritual revolution on earth, one that had the power to change the world. And we were to be on the front lines of that revolution, we the church. That was the plan. Jesus called that the coming of the Kingdom of God and it was meant to be good news for the entire world.

But sadly the church over the centuries has often failed to be that good news…

What about our generosity? In the wealthiest of all nations in Christian history we give just 2.5% of our incomes to God’s work, 75% less than the biblical tithe. And 98% of what we give is spent in the United States – 98% for us and 2% for the rest of the world.

“I was hungry while you had all you needed. I was thirsty but you drank bottled water. I was a stranger and you wanted me deported. I needed clothes but you needed more clothes. I was sick but you pointed out the behaviours that led to my sickness. I was in prison and you said I was getting what I deserved.”

This is the version of Matthew 25 that many Americans and even churches have embraced.

I believe that the American church stands at a crossroads. The world we live in under siege. Three billion are desperately poor, one billion hungry, millions are trafficked in human slavery. Ten million children die needlessly every year. Wars and conflicts are wreaking havoc. Pandemic diseases are spreading and ethnic conflict is flaming. Terrorism is growing. Most of our brothers and sisters in the developing world live in grinding poverty. And in the midst of this stands the church in America with resources, knowledge and tools unequalled in the history of our faith.

I believe we stand on the brink of a defining moment and have a choice to make.

When historians look back in 100 years what will they write about this nation of 340,000 churches? What will they say of the churches response to the great challenges of our time; AIDS, poverty, hunger, terrorism and war?

Will they say that these authentic Christians rose up courageously and responded to the tide of human suffering to comfort the afflicted and douse the flames of hatred? Will they speak of an unprecedented outpouring of generosity to meet the needs of the world’s poor? Will they speak of the moral leadership and compelling vision of our leaders? Will they write that this, the beginning of the 21st century, was the churches’ finest hour?

Or will they look back and see a church too comfortable and insulated from the pain of the rest of the world, empty of compassion and devoid of deeds? Will they write about a people who stood by and watched while a hundred million died of AIDS, and 50 million children were orphaned, of Christians who lived in luxury and self indulgence while millions died from a lack food and water?

Will school children write and discuss about a church who had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build hospitals, schools and clinics? In short will we be remembered as the church that had 'a hole in its Gospel'?

I want you to imagine just for a moment what would happen if we in the Christian community really stepped up to God’s call to take the good news to the ends of the earth. What if our wealthy churches turned their faces outward away from their big sanctuaries, PowerPoint screens and praise music and turned their faces toward the pain and brokenness in our world? What if we brought the whole tithe into the storehouse and embraced the whole Gospel?

Sometimes I dream and I ask "What if?" What if we actually took this Gospel seriously? Could we, might we, actually be able to change the world? As I close let me read you an imaginary press release from the United Nations dated 2025…’

(for the rest of this address watch the full fifteen minutes of Richard Stearns Cape Town 2010 address ‘Wealth, Poverty and Power - The Hole in our Gospel’ )

Jesus’ Nazareth Manifesto as a basis for healthcare mission

Jesus Christ’s dynamic entry into first century Palestine was marked by miraculous healing of many illnesses for which even today there are no known treatments. But along with his compassion to restore health he brought the gospel message of healing of broken relationships - between human beings, between human beings and the planet and most crucially between human beings and God.

Luke, probably the first ever Christian doctor, tells us that Jesus sent his followers out ‘to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick’(Luke 9:2). Right from the beginning ministry to the spirit and ministry to the body have gone hand in hand.

For the last 2,000 years, Christian doctors and nurses, inspired by the example and teaching of Jesus, have been at the forefront of efforts to alleviate human suffering, cure disease, and advance knowledge and understanding.

Many of medicine’s pioneers were men and women who had deep Christian faith: Pare, Pasteur, Lister, Paget, Barnado, Jenner, Simpson, Sydenham, Osler, Scudder, Livingstone and many more.

In the 21st century, whiles some avenues for missionary work are closing, others are opening wide. Christian health professionals, and particularly doctors, have a passport to limited access and creative access countries that those of many other professions do not. But what is their mandate and what should be their priorities in playing the part in fulfilling Jesus’ great commission?

Jesus’ Nazareth manifesto in Luke 4 provides a biblical basis for healthcare mission.

We are told that when standing to read in the synagogue on the Sabbath in his home town, he was handed the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and ‘found the place where it is written’:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour (Luke 4:18,19)

The Jews listening would have recognised this quote from Isaiah 61, which actually ends, ’And the day of vengeance of our God’ (Isaiah 61:1,2). Jesus didn’t read these words but stopped mid-verse presumably to illustrate that redemption and judgment were going to be separated in history. Judgment would be delayed in order to allow people to repent. The Jews didn’t understand God’s mercy in delaying judgment, his love or the scope of his redemptive plan.

The manifesto starts, ’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me’. Elsewhere Jesus says, ’As the Father has sent me, I am sending you... Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:21,22)

It goes on to reveal Jesus’ four-fold ministry, which is to be our own model: preaching, healing, deliverance and justice.

(Excerpted from paper delivered at a dialogue session at the Third Lausanne Congress, Cape Town 2010. The full text is available on the Lausanne Conversation Website)

Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization closes in Cape Town with a ringing call to the Church

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization closed in 25 October in Cape Town with a ringing call to the Church. This Congress, perhaps the widest and most diverse gathering of Christians ever held in the history of the Church, drew 4,000 selected participants from 198 nations. Organizers extended its reach into over 650 GlobaLink sites in 91 countries and drew 100,000 unique visits to its web site from 185 countries during the week of the Congress.

‘Our vision and hope was firstly for a ringing affirmation of the uniqueness of Christ and the truth of the biblical gospel; and a clear statement on evangelism and the mission of the church - all rooted in Scripture,’ said Lindsay Brown, Lausanne Movement International Director, in his closing address. ‘The evangelical church has rightly put an emphasis on bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to every people group, but we have perhaps been a little weaker in our attempts to apply biblical principles to every area of society, and to public policy: to the media, to business, to government. We need to engage deeply with all human endeavour - and with the ideas which shape it.’ The Congress included an Executive Leadership Forum and a Think Tank for leaders in Government, Business and Academia. ‘There is a groundswell of conviction,' said Mr Brown, ‘that greater concerted effort is needed to apply biblical truth in these arenas.’

The Cape Town Commitment, a declaration of belief and a call to action, will stand in the historic tradition of The Lausanne Covenant, which issued from the 1974 Congress, held in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Lausanne Covenant became widely-regarded as one of the most significant documents in recent church history. The Lausanne Movement, since its founding by the US evangelist Billy Graham, has worked to strengthen evangelical belief, and to reawaken the evangelical church’s responsibility in God’s world. The Cape Town Commitment is therefore in two parts. The first part, a Trinitarian statement, fashioned in the language of love, is the fruit of discussion by senior evangelical theologians drawn from all continents. This is available now on the Lausanne website, www.lausanne.org. The consequent call to action, shaped from discussion at the Congress around critical issues facing the Church over the next ten years, will be completed by December. It is expected to engage in principle with such issues from all parts of the world. Chris Wright, International Director of Langham Partnership International (John Stott Ministries / USA) is chief architect.

‘We would like The Cape Town Commitment to be seen as “a gift to the local church from representatives of the global church,”' said the Revd Doug Birdsall, Chairman of The Lausanne Movement. He then outlined the Board’s plans for the movement’s future: ‘First: to stay light on its feet, remaining agile in its ability to respond to new challenges and opportunities. Second, to be strong theologically, firmly rooted in Scripture and nourished by the best reflection on how we take the Word to the world. Third, to provide a reliable and credible contribution to Christian discussion and mission. Fourth, to keep a focus on identifying and developing younger leaders. And fifth, to be strategic in gathering the right people at the right times in the right places.

‘Lausanne gatherings will breathe oxygen into the fire that sparks more fires, and track progress made on the priorities established in Cape Town,’ he said. Mr Birdsall sketched out plans for a series of Davos-like gatherings, drawing thought leaders from the Church and from mission agencies, from government, business and academia. The first is planned for June 2012.

The Lausanne Movement is rooted globally under regional leadership around the world. The funding for the Congress had been raised from all regions, and from a ‘healthy combination’ of significant major gifts and many smaller gifts, often sacrificially-given.

The Congress extended to an estimated audience around the world of a further 100,000 people through its GlobaLink sites. It was also possible to participate virtually. Prior to the Congress, The Lausanne Movement launched a multi-lingual online Lausanne Global Conversation to begin the discussion process. This was complemented by a series of radio programmes in countries in the Global South. The Global Conversation, the first of its kind, has gained significant momentum and will continue. A round-the-clock team mined the data of all responses throughout the Congress. Malicious hacking of the Congress website brought the site down for the first two days.

‘The local church is God’s chosen locus of service and evangelism,’ said Doug Birdsall. The Congress closed with a celebration of Holy Communion, led by Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda. For this, 100 communion sets had been borrowed, each from a local church. ‘These represent the remembering of Christ’s death across many nations,’ Mr Birdsall continued. ‘We are a global movement, committed to the local church.’

Cape Town 2010 was held in collaboration with The World Evangelical Alliance.

As UK Christian doctors, are we as radically different from non-Christians in our attitudes and actions as our Indian colleagues are?

I paid for my trip to India in stress and sweat. Not out there, but in the mad rush to clear my desk before departure, and in the bulging in-tray and looming deadlines on return. However the blessing I received in ten autumn days, through being involved in the EMFI national conference and in visiting hospitals and health projects in the northwest, was well worth it. There is much to tell, but let me share the three things that struck me most.

The first was a sense of thanks for the blessings Christianity has brought in Britain. We easily forget that we have clean drinking water, low infant mortality, few street children, minimal corruption, good health and education, a functioning legal system and a good standard of living largely as the legacy of Christian revival in the18th and 19th centuries. What Wesley and Whitefield sparked in the 1700s led ultimately to profound social reform through notables like Wilberforce, Barnardo and the Clapham sect. Our medical system too is indebted to the foundation laid by Christian doctors like Lister, Jenner and Sydenham and most of our present difficulties are because we have forgotten as a society what once made us great. By contrast, India’s principle problem is a suffocating ideology which stratifies people into castes, values cows more than children and promotes spirituality without morality. Hinduism has two main failings: it isn’t true and it doesn’t work.

The second thing that struck me was a sense of wonder at what God is doing today in India. There are now over 40 million Christians, and 44,000 Indian missionaries serve cross-culturally within its borders. Past missionary efforts have led to the Syriac church in Kerala, the Catholic Church around Goa and the Protestant churches in the northeast and south-east tip, in the 1st, 15th and 19th centuries respectively. In some states Christians now make up over 80% of the population. But all these past incursions of God’s spirit are being dwarfed by the current wave of new converts, from all backgrounds, but especially amongst the poor. I met new Christians who were formerly Jain, Animist, Sikh and high-caste Hindu and visited areas where Buddhist and Muslims are coming to Christ. There is a real sense of expectancy amongst the churches and doors are wide open.

But third, I was most challenged by the way many of our Christian doctor colleagues integrated their faith and lifestyle, particularly in their concern for the poor. The Evangelical Fellowship of India (EMFI), our sister organisation, is growing rapidly, and has been built on a firm foundation of sacrificial and compassionate service to those in most need. There are still over 1,200 church hospitals in India largely staffed by Indian Christian doctors, many of whom trained at one of two Christian hospitals, Vellore and Ludhiana. Most are in areas where Christians are fewest in number, and through associated urban and rural community health, literacy and development projects, are empowering marginalised people and transforming communities. One team of 70 healthcare professionals, in ten years, had helped transform the lives of 200,000 of Delhi’s slum dwellers to the extent where child mortality had fallen 80% and there was 95% immunisation, almost full employment and minimal malnutrition or TB. Pregnant women received antenatal care of almost UK standards (including ultrasound) and in one site I visited most of the houses had metered electricity, many with electric fans and televisions. What the Christians do provides the opening for what they say. In the same way, in the aftermath of the Orissa floods and the Gujerati earthquake, Christian compassion through healthcare has opened up to the gospel those regions most antagonistic to Christianity.

I wonder if, as Christian doctors in the UK, we are as radically different from non-Christians in our attitudes and actions as our Indian brothers and sisters are. And if not, what effect it has on how the gospel is received by our patients and colleagues.

Armenia is a country with a remarkable Christian past and future

Last month, during a visit to Armenia, I had the opportunity to visit the historic church of Khor Virap (pictured), situated on the Turkish border immediately adjacent to Mount Ararat.

Khor Virap was the site where ‘Gregory the Illuminator’ had been placed in a pit in the ground for thirteen years in the late third century by the King of Armenia (T’rdat) because his father had assassinated the King’s father. Both had been in exile in different parts of the Roman Empire during which time Gregory, who was not actually Armenian, was converted to the Christian faith. He was kept alive by the King’s sister lowering food down to him and was eventually let out by the King after his sister had a dream indicating that there would be serious repercussions were he to be kept imprisoned. On being released he led the King to the Christian faith and apparently also healed him of a mental illness. As a result he was given the freedom of Armenia to preach the Gospel and establish churches. In this way Armenia was officially declared the first Christian country in the world in AD 301, twenty years before the conversion of Constantine.

Just over a century later in 405 AD the unique Armenian script (the language was previously written in Greek script) was revealed in a dream, written down and the language transcribed into it. This move effectively protected the Armenians from cultural assimilation over the following centuries and helped to ensure that Armenia remains 97% Christian today.

Although Christian faith for many Armenians is now simply nominal there is nonetheless a rich Christian cultural heritage which goes right back to the first century when two of Jesus’ twelve disciples, Bartholomew and Thaddeus, visited and established churches in 40 AD. Bartholomew was later martyred in the country.

Armenia currently has a population of three million but over ten million Armenians live in over one hundred countries worldwide in communities which preserve their language and culture. Almost all are at least bilingual and they therefore constitute a potentially strong missionary force. Armenia’s location within the 10:40 window, surrounded by Muslim nations is also clearly very strategic.

The borders to Turkey and Azerbaijan on the west and east respectively remain closed but those to Georgia in the north and Iran in the south are open. Armenians believe that both the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark were located in ‘Greater Armenia’. Mount Ararat, where the Ark settled, is now within Turkey and therefore much less accessible. The Garden of Eden, which is described in Genesis as being at the source of four rivers (Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon and Pishon) was, they believe, located in northern Iran just west of modern day Tabriz. The Gihon and the Pishon they recognise as two rivers which have been subsequently renamed and which drain into the west and south coasts of the Caspian Sea respectively.

Armenia has been through a lot of hardship throughout the centuries and especially in the last hundred years. A key defining event was the Armenian genocide of 1915 when allegedly over a million Armenians lost their lives at the hands of the Turks. The country was then for 70 years part of the former Soviet Union and a further 30 to 50 thousand died in Stalin’s purges. Just before independence the Spitak earthquake killed thirty thousand in 1988 and after independence in 1991 the war with Azerbaijan over the disputed Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh accounted for a further 30,000 lives. These events were in large part responsible for the mass emigration of Armenians at different points over the last century.

Whilst the Apostolic church is characterised by somewhat archaic ritual, ceremony and liturgy in ancient Armenian which few understand, there is vibrant new life in the evangelical churches and particularly in the Baptist and Pentecostal denominations.

The rich Christian history, strategic location, wide diaspora and biculturalism of Armenians make this country very important in world mission in the 21st century.