East-West has one consuming passion: to make God known among every nation, every tribe, every tongue, and every people. There are 3.2 billion people living in spiritual darkness without access to the gospel message, and we are desperate to reach them with the radical message of God’s love and grace. Medical Outreach is one strategy we are using to accomplish this task.
In spiritually dark areas of the world, there’s a growing need for creative ways to begin and strengthen church planting movements among the unreached and unengaged. Matthew 9:35 describes how Jesus creatively accessed people by combining healing with preaching.
“Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.”
To create a similar medical outreach strategy, East-West partnered with a like-minded organization called Teach to Transform (TTT) who has a set of unique, proven, and empowering medical training modules.
We use these training modules to equip our national evangelists and church planters in basic medical care and give their house churches the necessary equipment to carry out this TTT ministry. As house churches serve their communities using basic medicine, they gain access to the lost, are agents of love and mercy, and ultimately disciple new believers, who begin gathering in new church plants. Medical access is especially beneficial for us to engage in areas that are historically hostile to the gospel.
While TTT can work in most fields, it is especially effective in areas known for highpersecution, resistance to the gospel, and where there is a need for more access to medical care. Here’s a breakdown of how we are implementing TTT on the mission field:
Step 1: Our national partners decide they want to start a TTT ministry as a part of their strategy to gain access to new communities to share the gospel and start churches. We then schedule a 5-day TTT Training on their field.
Step 2: We build a team of medical and non-medical trainers from the U.S. who will help us launch this new TTT ministry. We call this short-term team an M-PACK Team.
Step 3: On the field, many local house churches send at minimum three of their most faithful evangelists and church planters to the TTT training.
Step 4: Our M-PACK team deploys to meet these national believers over five-days to empower them with basic medical skills to teach health, hygiene, & disease prevention; basic wound and burn care; how to take vital signs and recognizing danger; and how to help babies breathe after birth.
Step 5: After graduation, participating house churches are given medical backpacks of equipment so they can send their newly trained evangelists into neighboring villages to administer medical care and proclaim the good news 365 days of the year.
Step 6: As the Holy Spirit moves and people are cared for, they respond to Jesus, are discipled and transformed, and doors are opened for church planting movements to begin.
While TTT can work on most fields, we have found it to be especially effective in areas:
“And wherever he went—into villages, towns or countryside—they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed.”
-Mark 6:56
Join an M-PACK Team and go with us to launch a new TTT Medical Outreach Ministry. Each M-PACK Team needs medical and non-medical professionals willing to train nationals in various East-West overseas fields (average short-term mission length is 10-days). An easy, stateside training is required once to learn the TTT methodology prior to going on your first Medical Team.
