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? A nurse working three shifts a week and trying to do community outreach with your church on the weekend? A theology student wondering how to reach sick and hurting people in their community? 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, and students of theology and 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.
The 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.
San Diego Christian College 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 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 8/7/2013