15. The Call and The Caller

In November, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Incredible plenary sessions, passionate worship, inspiring break out sessions, and a large exhibit hall created a perfect place to meet old friends, make new connections, and dream big with a like-minded community who are all pursuing medicine and missions. 

My favorite part was seeing a bigger picture of how God is working all over the world, and how blessed I am to even have the choice of where I want to serve him in the world. 

One session particularly gripped me. It was a man talking about marketplace workers in creative access countries. As he overviewed the great commission and the remaining task, he identified that the remaining unreached people groups reside in the hardest to access places. These are the final frontiers, and that’s exactly the reason why. These strictly religious Muslim countries are closed to missionaries and hostile to Christians, making access into them difficult. However, medical professionals have an advantage since they can get in on work visas and then live as marketplace workers. This is an emerging missionary strategy that is taking off fast.

At one point he held out his America passport. “Do you know how valuable it is that you even have one of these?” Then he talked about how having a medical degree from the United States of America is an additional extremely valuable commodity. 

“You who have been rescued out of darkness and brought into the kingdom of God, who have been born with an American passport and all the freedoms and finances and resources that come along with it, and who have a medical degree from one of the most coveted nations in the world...you are not in the top 1%. You are not even in the top 0.1%. You are like a lochness monster pulling a rainbow unicorn on water skis.”

And then he paused and added...

“And we keep asking God for a sign that we should go.” 

He boldly summarized it all by saying the fulfillment of the great commission rests in the hands of marketplace workers, people who have a professional skill to get into closed countries to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

“In these creative access countries,” he said, “you are likely to get moved around a lot. Doors will open and close. You may have to flee danger. That’s why you don’t need to get too set on any one country or location. Love the Caller more than the call.”