ICMDA Recordings

Recorded on 20 April 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Rick Allen.

Healthcare missions, typically conducted in low resource environments is both demanding and exhausting. The impact on one’s life can cross professional, relational, and spiritual boundaries. Pre-field healthcare missionaries are not typically prepared for the demands they will encounter. In addition, once they are on the field, they are not cared for in a way that is appropriate for the challenges they face.

MedSend is endeavoring to transform the care of healthcare missionaries. In this webinar Rick Allen plans to share some of MedSend's model and role out plans.

Rick spent 25 years in executive roles within the computer software business. He was called out of business to be a pastor and run MedSend which provides grants and scholarships for healthcare professionals to live out their calling. Rick stepped away from the role as pastor several years ago and is now the full-time CEO of MedSend. He desires to see many come to know the love of Jesus through the delivery of compassionate healthcare.

Recorded on 13 April 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Dr Tan Lai Yong.

Dr Tan has spent 15 years (1996 to 2010) running village health worker training programs in Yunnan, China. During this webinar he will share insights, mistakes made, and reflections on his experiences.

Recorded on 6 April 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Dr Rachael Pickering.

This series equips healthcare professionals to respond to the evils of torture and ill-treatment. The first session looked at definitions, types, the law, and God's heart for the persecuted. The second session examined best practice CARE - Caring, Advocating, Recording and Evidencing. 

Recorded on 30 March 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Dr Chris Jenkins.

Spiritual warfare is a reality that all Christians will encounter. However, not all spiritual battles involve open power encounters with forces of darkness. Though these may receive more attention, the more pervasive conflict takes place in our minds. What is the example Paul uses? To gain spiritual victory in this one area would be worth learning the lesson he teaches. But it is just one example of the war we are in and if we recognize and win this battle, we will find greater freedom in our walk and work with God.

Chris has been a Christian for five decades. Before going into family medicine, he worked with a missionary organization starting adult literacy ministries in Africa and Asia in order to help Christians read the Bible for themselves and to also give them a tool to reach their non-Christian illiterate neighbors by teaching them to read while sharing the gospel with them. 

Recorded on 23 March 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Dr Shari Falkenheimer

Missions is not geographic, but cross-cultural. God is bringing the nations to us so that we can reach out to them where we live and work. They may be more open to the gospel while out of their own cultural setting. Many are never in a Christian’s home while in their new country and are intensely lonely. God put us near them to love them, help them adjust to our culture, and to share our lives, our testimonies and the gospel with them.

Recorded on 16 March 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a webinar with Dr Pablo Martinez

We all dream about a successful life, but what are success and failure in God´s eyes? What is success for our society? The answer to these questions contains a very important key to living a life according to God´s heart, free from the tyranny of self-ambition.

The world measures success or failure using mainly three parameters: action, visible results, and image (outward appearance). For this reason its emphases are on activism, productivity (getting a lot done) and social status. The core of success lies in quantity and public image. Identity comes from activity.

The biblical view differs radically from the world´s. Its emphasis is not on doing a lot, but on being more holy; it is not on productivity, but on stewardship; it does not look on the outward appearance, but on the heart. Identity does not come from activity, but from belonging, being in Christ.

Recorded on 9 March 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Mark Pickering chairs a webinar with Dr Richard Winter

There is obviously nothing wrong with striving for excellence but sometimes that pursuit seduces us into the unhealthy realms of perfectionism. Our culture surrounds us with images of perfect bodies, perfect houses, perfect cars...

We will explore the assets and liabilities of perfectionism, delve into what produces the perfectionist drive, and finally look at ways to work against extreme thoughts and find a healthy balance.

Ultimately it is the understanding and experience of grace that begins to free us from the chains of unhealthy perfectionism.

Dr Winter grew up in England and trained in medicine at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and then in psychiatry in Bristol. (He is a past member of The Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK.)

He was also a counsellor, teacher and leader at the English L’Abri and associate pastor of a church in Hampshire for some years before moving to the US in 1992 to head the counselling program at Covenant Seminary where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Dr. Winter’s research interests have been at the interface of psychology, medicine, and theology. He is the author of The Roots of Sorrow: Reflections on Depression and Hope (2001); Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment: Rediscovering Passion and Wonder (2002); Perfecting Ourselves to Death: The Pursuit of Excellence and the Perils of Perfectionism (2005); and When Life Goes Dark: Finding Hope in the Midst of Depression (2012). He continues practicing therapy privately and with the Global Counseling Network.

To listen live to future ICMDA webinars, visit https://icmda.net/resources/webinars/

Recorded on 23February 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Alex Bloek chairs a Q&A with Dr Augustin Lutakwa.

The upcoming ICMDA World Congress due to take place in Arusha from 20-25 June 2023 will be the 17th World Congress coinciding with the 60th-anniversary celebration of the ICMDA.

Organizing these four-yearly events is a massive undertaking. It requires human capital as well as financial capital for it to be successful. The latter comes mainly from two sources, attendance as well as support to the bursary fund, hence mobilization focuses on both.

Recorded on 23February 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr John Greenall chairs a Q&A with Dr Mhoira Leng.

Compassionate care for the whole person is at the heart of palliative care. Walking alongside people and their families facing chronic illness and into the end of their lives is an immense privilege. In many parts of the world this care is not available representing one of the greatest health inequalities. In other situations, economic, cultural and political pressures can undermine values orientated, faith based holistic care. In Jesus we have the ultimate example of compassionate holistic care... how do we reflect his example in how we approach suffering and how we care for those those in pain?

Dr Leng trained in internal medicine at Aberdeen University before specialising in Palliative Medicine. She took up a senior consultant and honorary senior lecturer position at Aberdeen University for 10 years and has a particular interest in international palliative care. Since 1998, she has travelled extensively within India and to Eastern Europe and Africa as well.

She left the NHS in 2005 to work full time in international settings where she comes alongside partners in the developing world to build capacity, offer mentorship, support curriculum development and new models of care. She also helps coordinate and is a faculty member of the Developing Health Course for CMF UK.

Recorded on 16 February 2023 for ICMDA Webinars.

Dr Peter Saunders chairs a Q&A with Prof John Whitehall.

Professor John Whitehall is the chair of CMDF Australia and Professor of Paediatrics at Western Sydney University. His 50 year career began at Sydney University, continued through developing countries and western Sydney as a general paediatrician, then focussed on neonatology before coming to WSU.

For 15 years he was Director of Neonatal Intensive Care in Townsville, North Queensland, which included ante-natal diagnosis, resuscitation, management and transportation of premature, dysmorphic and sick neonates, many of whom were Indigenous.

In Townsville, he was deeply involved in the establishment of the medical school at James Cook University and, for 20 years, taught modules of Tropical Paediatrics in the Masters programme in the School of Public Health. In recent years, he has also worked as a consultant physician in PNG, Sri Lanka and Madagascar. Currently, he teaches, leads research and has duties in general paediatrics.