Self Supporting Missions? Business as Mission!

The missionary nurse fairly exploded in my face: “You can’t mix business and mission.”

She was referring to a worker she had trained who was now going out on his own across the mountains and giving people shots and other medicines as he used to do in her clinic. What was he doing wrong? He was self-supporting! She said, “He not only charges for the injections he gives but for his burro and his tip across the mountain”

I got into this tense conversation by suggesting that if her clinic could only become self-supporting it could be replicated. I figured the clinic was meeting only one percent of the need of a vast mountainous area where we both worked. If she could develop a self-supporting de sign it could be expanded to reach 100% of the need.

But, you say, poor mountain people can’t afford doctors! Not so! My thought was that her trained nationals could carry two-way radios. Most illnesses were simple enough to treat and did not need a doctor, but whenever something unrecognizable came up these agents of mercy could report key symptoms by radio to a doctor down in the city. People can’t pay a doctor for every problem, or even for a half hour consultation. They need to know when it is essential to make the arduous trip to the city. In most cases they can pay for two minutes of a doctor’s time—to find out if that trip is necessary. …….It is “a business” when the people being served can pay its costs. It is also “mission” if it is a God-glorifying blessing as well.

In my situation the medical committee of the mission would not hear of it.

(Editorial Comment by Ralph D Winter Mission Frontiers , Nov-Dec 2007, Pg 4)