Conference changes its name!

West Coast Healthcare Missions and Ministry Conference, Whew what a mouthfull! Although descriptive of who we were, it was hard for people to determine if they fit in our conference. 

Are you an Christian MPH from Missouri wondering how best to combine faith and community health? If yes, join us! A nurse working three shifts a week and trying to do community outreach with your church on the weekend?  If yes, join us! A theology student wondering how to reach sick and hurting people in their community? If yes, join us! Are you interested in the community located at the cross streets of Faith and Health? If yes, please join us!

Through a time of prayer and discussion, we decided to simplify the name to Healthcare Missions Conference. 

We struggled over the word "healthcare" and loss of the word "ministry" in our conference name.

Healthcare is a word which combines both health and care(ing). We were concerned that in the United States our national discussion uses "healthcare" to identify our country's national policy of providing health services. As a word, "healthcare" seems to be a bit sullied now. However, is there a more worthy group of people who can rightly claim to be dedicated to health + caring - and capable restore the rightful meaning of the word?  So the word "healthcare" stayed.

For the sake of brevity "ministry" was removed despite the fact that we liked the words "health ministry". We concluded that the concept of "mission", which relates to reaching out to unfamiliar people groups with a goal of bringing people to a relationship with Christ or growing the church, seemed to adequately fit our work both in inner city neighborhoods and small rural villages in the distant corners of the earth. 
 

Our community is very diverse and consists of Christian nurses, physicians, psychologists, theologians, marriage and family therapists, pharmacists, dentists, physical therapists, urban health workers, community health evangelists, medical missionaries, and child welfare workers, Fuller students and students of the health professions - just to name a few. We are multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-denominational. The conference continues to purposely focus on both urban and global interests. We have kept the conference focus broad because we believe that we can discover novel ideas by engaging a broadly diverse community.

This year's conference is the first to be thematic. The conference will illuminate the work of the church in the area of health and healing through wholistic ministry. The effects of this church-based healing ministry are to bring SHALOM to people and their communities. Sadly, Shalom is a word that is not part of our routine lexicon. We interpret shalom broadly as the effect of working towards right relationships with God through his Son, Jesus Christ, family, community, work and God's creation, the earth and all that is in it.

The more than 25 faculty for this conference are true servant-leaders in the community of Health and Faith. Not only will we learn from them, we will spend unfettered one-on-one time together networking and sharing. 

Fuller Theological Seminary, in Pasadena California, is a safe place to meet so that the broad groups embraced by the conference gather together to educate, encourage and empower each other. We will leave the conference feeling re-energized and ready to engage our communities in a healing ministry.

We recognize that there is much we do not know about work being done in the health and faith community. Objective study and research are part of the solution to our knowlege gap. To broaden the research effort in our community, The Center for Missiologic Research at Fuller, which is dedicated to performing research relevant to the mission community, has partnered with us as a conference sponsor. We have invited Fuller student scholars to present their research at the conference.

We hope that you will find your home - a place of personal growth shared with kindred spirits - here with us!

Peter Yorgin, MD
Co-Administrator for the conference

Revised 2/12/2012