Reviewed by Dr Sneha Kirubakaran
5 MINUTE READ
From Luke’s Journal February 2024 | Vol.29 No.1 | Missions and Sacrificial Service
I first read this book when I was learning how to be a better disciple of Jesus through an intensive Discipleship Training School (DTS) run by Youth With A Mission (YWAM). It was a Medical DTS targeting health professionals. By then, I had almost a decade of experience volunteering and leading serial short-term medical mission trips to various countries around the world.
Yet I attended the Medical DTS hoping to learn new and better ways of ‘doing medical missions’. This book, Preach and Heal by Dr. Charles Fielding, challenged some very fundamental things about how I had been ‘doing medical missions’ before.
Going on an overseas trip to a needy area with a team, providing free medical aid and teaching, and giving the locals something exciting to talk about for a short while, was great fun. It was always a rich and rewarding experience for me, both socially and spiritually. But was there spiritual benefit to the people we met? Yes, they knew we were Christians, travelling with a Christian organisation (which was quite safe and acceptable in the countries I was going to). Yes, we prayed with our patients, our local hosts, our interpreters, and other people we intersected with. Yes, we even shared testimonies or sermons at church services or other meetings.
“I knew that one of the most powerful outcomes of our team’s visit was to give our local hosts more kudos amongst their communities, with an eventual flow-on effect of open doors and open hearts to the message of Jesus.”
Our local hosts would usually share the gospel in the local language, but none of our team members ever did. I knew that one of the most powerful outcomes of our team’s visit was to give our local hosts more kudos amongst their communities, with an eventual flow-on effect of open doors and open hearts to the message of Jesus. But I had begun to question why my own ‘good works’ didn’t pack more explicit spiritual punch during these trips.
This book revealed that in the “tension between evangelism and social ministry”, my approach had skewed heavily towards social ministry. I was doing a lot of ‘healing’ – that’s what I was trained to do, after all – but almost zilch ‘preaching’.
Pithy statements such as, “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary, use words,” had trained me into believing that if I carried out my good works under a Christian banner and with a Christian mien about myself, then no explicit words would be necessary to attract people to Jesus. Don’t get me wrong, there is some truth to this. And of course, we trust in a God who does amazing things through us, despite us. But Fielding challenges an ‘unbalanced’ emphasis on either preaching or healing.
Fielding uses the metaphor of a ‘two-handled plough’ to argue that BOTH preaching (explicit words about Jesus and His salvation) and healing (implicit good works carried out with love and compassion) are necessary.
Jesus practised, taught, and commanded both. The two concepts and commands are clearly juxtaposed in Bible verses such as, “He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2, NKJV). See also Matthew 10:7-8 and Mark 6:7, 12-13. Furthermore, Fielding highlights that the Biblical principles of ‘preaching the Gospel’ and ‘caring for the needy’, should be undertaken with a clear view to accomplishing further Biblical principles of ‘making disciples’ and ‘planting apostolic churches’.
The book has 22 chapters divided into 3 sections.
Part One: Preach or Heal outlines how mission workers are often dichotomised into one of two styles of ministry – preaching or healing. Preaching includes teaching, sharing the gospel and evangelising. Healing includes social ministries such as education, economic development, counselling, and medical aid.
Part Two: The Incarnational Element explains ten key elements of a disciple-making strategy that incorporates both preaching and healing. The ten elements cover three ingredients (what you add) consisting of prayer, abundant Gospel sowing, and intentional church planting; four methods (how you do it) consisting of using Scriptural authority, local leadership, lay leadership, and a cell/house format; and three products (what will result) including churches planting churches, rapid reproduction, and healthy churches. Furthermore, an ABCDE approach of Accessing the unreached; getting Behind closed doors; Caring for the needy; making Disciples; and Empowering the nascent church is explained.
Part Three: Health Strategy Possibilities outlines fourteen specific health strategies (e.g., hospice, rehabilitation, refugee camps, traditional birth attendants, etc.) and how each could be used to enter a community, make disciples, and empower the church.
Reading this book sent me on a journey to discover how I could better incorporate explicit words about Jesus into my medical work – especially in Australia. What I learned through attending Saline Process courses has played a huge role in this regard. I wrote an article about this for Luke’s Journal a couple of years ago (see 2020 article entitled ‘On Being Salty and Shiny’).
Even as I write this book review, I recognise that my journey is far from over. I am yet to build skills to use my medical work as a deliberate thrust towards planting churches. It was the Lord’s faithfulness in my journey that eventually led to the development of the ‘preaching’ aspects of my work. So I yet trust in Him for more growth and development to come!
Preach and Heal: A Biblical Model for Missions
by Charles Fielding
ISBN: 0976764563
International Mission Board, SBC. 2008
Dr Sneha Kirubakaran
Dr Sneha Kirubakaran is the current National Chair of CMDFA. She is an associate professor with the University of Queensland Rural Clinical School and the head of the Regional Training Hub Central Queensland in Rockhampton. She locums as a Rural Generalist in small country hospitals around Central Queensland.