The Story of our Health Message

An Impediment to United Action

The resultant feeling of independence from the General Conference organization, on the part of the directors of the sanitarium at Battle Creek and its allied organizations, may be seen in the following statement made by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, the chairman, in his opening remarks at the first session of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, at the General Conference of 1901. He said: SHM 303.3

“This association has charge of the medical and benevolent work of the entire denomination, and it has the power of the entire denomination in it; for it has all the presidents in it, and the whole General Conference in it, and it has something more in it besides. And so you see it is competent to deal with any question that needs to be brought forward in relation to medical missionary work. There is no question that this association can consider that it needs to refer to the General Conference Committee or the General Conference, because it is the General Conference, and the Medical Missionary Association. We have, therefore, a responsibility on our shoulders to do the right thing, and to know what we ought to do.”—Ibid. (Italics mine.) SHM 304.1

Mutual understanding and co-operation between the General Conference and the ministry, on the one hand, and the Medical Missionary Association and physicians, on the other, was made still more difficult because there was no representative of the medical work on the General Conference Committee. The personnel of the Foreign Mission Board, with headquarters in New York City, likewise included no representative of the medical missionary work. Yet in the foreign fields, as well as in the United States, there were evangelists and executives sent out and directed by the General Conference, while also physicians and nurses selected were sent out and directed by the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association. These workers were all members of the same church, with many mutual relationships in their work, yet these circumstances tended to division rather than to the unity that was greatly needed. SHM 304.2