Serve with ABWE
Healthcare Ministries
For a long time, ABWE has used healthcare ministry as a way of taking the gospel and the love of God to people around the world. Our ministry goal is to see people come to know Christ as Savior, help them join together to form local churches, and to aid these local churches as they develop church planting and missions movements.
The world is filled with hurting people: those who are sick in body, in mind, in spirit, or in all of these. Healthcare professionals who desire to use their talents and skills in a biblically centered, culturally sensitive outreach will find many opportunities with ABWE. If you desire to become involved in healthcare ministry, you will find that through it come opportunities to meaningfully express God’s love, way of salvation, and hope for eternal life. You can become involved through long-term career missions, shorter-term assistant missionary work, or very short-term trips. You can exercise your skills through different kinds of ministry, such as itinerant clinics, hospitals, pregnancy crisis centers, aid for the disabled, church-centered community healthcare projects, orphanages, AIDS ministry outreach, or partnering with national mission-run healthcare projects.
We have three hospitals that provide multi-disciplinary outlets: The Gambia has a full-sized outpatient clinic with an associated twenty-bed facility. Togo has a fully equipped surgical facility with outpatient care. They are currently considering a hospital ministry far north of Togo as a way to reach a resistant population. A full-service inpatient and outpatient hospital is located in South Asia with an associated college of health sciences.
In the Ukraine, itinerant clinics are used in liaison with local churches to strengthen outreach ministries, open new areas to the gospel, and provide some care for church members’ needs while giving the caregiver opportunities for one-on-one ministry.
Pregnancy Crisis Centers are a very effective outreach ministry in Peru where the first ABWE centers were started. Several other fields are planning to start their own centers in the near future when God supplies the personnel and funding.
Some people take short-term healthcare ministry trips to established fields as well as to areas where there is hope of starting new ministries. What a wonderful way to spend some vacation days, to see what part missions could play in your life, and to be used of God in overseas outreach while you are working full time at home or preparing for your future ministry.
ABWE partners with the African Fundamental Baptist Mission in Liberia offering short-term medical ministry trips to provide care for the ill and opportunities to teach clinic staff and assist them in planning for their long-term outreach in healthcare ministry. ABWE is currently considering other partnerships in different places with different kinds of ministry as well.
A ministry to the disabled offers a broad scope of opportunities for healthcare professionals to meet physical needs that open the doors to spiritual ministry. People who have lost a limb and need an artificial one and those who have ambulatory problems that need appliances to gain mobility often wait hopelessly for someone who never comes. How much longer must they wait?
For more information, view the geographic area that interests you, or visit ABWE's International Healthcare Ministries Website.