PAIN – A GIFT!?!?
By Fred Loper

Good morning!

I need to teach you another greeting…

At my church you could never get by with only English!

The time is long past when we could be good missionaries and speak only English. Let’s try “sabadee” which is what our Laotian congregation would use to say “Good morning.” Now let’s try a little different version “sabadee kop” which is what our Thai members would say.

First, I need to say, “Thank you very much” to the Mainstream Baptists of Oklahoma and to the Baptist General Convention of Texas. They have allowed God to do a miracle in the lives of myself and my family. In May of 2002 my family and I resigned as national missionaries at the North American Mission Board.

We had served for 16 years as the only national medical missionaries. We worked to catalyze the development of medical/ dental missions in North America among Southern Baptists.

When asked to affirm the Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 as a requirement to continue our missionary service, we knew that we had reached our final “Tipping Point” at NAMB. We had, for quite some time, been restless in our role due to a number of reasons. The BF&M of 2000, however, was the final straw. I was tempted to return to the practice of medicine; but God had other ideas for us.

Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship was in the process of implementing a new vision of expanding their ministry into North America. The BGCT and Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists had set up a Missionary Transition Fund for missionaries like us. In a meeting in June of 2002 the BGCT and Mainstream Baptists offered to provide BMDF with our full support for an entire year! It was truly God at work. BMDF will be able to provide full funding for us after no more than three years. We will trust God to provide for the rest!

I want to tell you a little about us. We are members at Trinity International Baptist Church in Oklahoma City. Our building faces Route 66, the Mother Road, and connects us to Chicago and California. We are connected to the rest of the world by our congregations—a very racially and ethnically diverse English speaking group, a Chinese congregation, a Lao/Thai group, a Korean mission, and a forming group of Spanish speaking cell churches.

We are often accused of being a “Bapticostal” church due to all the tongues which we speak! The most common last name in our church is Chansombath which is Lao. Our parking lot smells the best of any parking lot in Southern Baptist life because of the variety of food that is cooked in our neighborhood—Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, French, country, Brasilian to name a few! We, like you, are doing our best to share Christ in a community that needs to know him. They are not an easy group to reach.

I am also a practicing physician. I like to think that my “practicing” has resulted in my being a better physician. I hope the same is true of my being a practicing Christian!

I have to confess that physicians are a little jealous of dentists!

• On medical/dental mission trips the dentists are always the most popular. After all they can actually do things that make people feel better on a permanent basis. Physicians can generally only do things like treat hypertension which never ends and often makes people feel worse!

• Dentists are also terrific anesthesiologists. Gary Dempsey, my personal dentist, never hurts me with either his anesthesia or procedures. It is great to have a tooth pulled or a cavity filled without pain. However, it isn’t so pleasant to eat afterwards. I keep biting my own lip which is numb and feels gigantic.

Pain relief is a marvelous thing—temporarily. It is disfiguring and even life threatening if it is permanent.

Paul Brand, MD and Philip Yancey describe in their book “The Gift of Pain” a world without pain. Can such a place exist? It not only can—it does—in a colony of leprosy patients! Leprosy is a disease that attacks nerves and causes loss of the sensation of pain. This numbness to injury and infection and temperature is what causes the disfigurement and loss of noses, fingers, ears, etc. that we see in these people.

Pain, whether spiritual, physical or emotional, is really an invaluable gift that God has given us. It tells us to STOP or to GET HELP NOW or YOU’RE IN DANGER.

We at this meeting are familiar with pain. There is agony about what has happened to Southern Baptists over the last twenty plus years. There is even more pain about what all this has done to missions. However, it is not all bad; the pain has caused us to change! Do you remember what “missions” was like 25 to 30 years ago? The average Southern Baptist gave some money to the Cooperative Program and perhaps a little to Annie Armstrong or Lottie Moon. Maybe their teenager went on a summer choir trip and sang concerts in other Southern Baptist churches; but that was about it!

Look at us now!

1. People see themselves as missionaries in their daily lives

• Bruce Bell the $10 doctor. Bruce is a 60+ year old successful internist in Oklahoma City who felt called to make his solo practice an outreach to Hispanics. He charges $10 per patient; has learned Spanish; and shows them Jesus by spoken word and loving action.

2. God has demolished walls all over the world

• Cuban Baptist Medical Fellowshippers in Venezuela. The Baptist Medical Fellowship of Western Cuba is a little over three years old and has more than 500 members. In January of 2002, four of their members joined a group of US BMDF members on a medical missions trip to Maracaibo, Venezuela. They were the first evangelical missionaries to leave Cuba since Castro came into power.

3. We are experts too

• Need free medicine? Ask Bill Sisson, Oklahoma pharmacy tech and former director of the Baptist Mission Center Clinic in Oklahoma City.
• Want to do dental, eye and medical clinics in Ukraine or help build a seminary in Poland? Ask Allen Winchester, Kentucky family practice doc and member of the BMDF Executive Committee.
• Need a congregational nurse at your church? Ask Leona Marion, Oklahoma R. N. and congregational nurse at Trinity International.

Pain has taught us all a lot!

Editor’s Note: This testimony was given at the Mainstream Convocation in February 2003.

April 2003