Early in 1981 Gerald Anderson, the noted missiologist, challenged me. "You write
and talk a lot about social justice," he said, "so why don't you put your money where your mouth is?" Upon which he
suggested I offer myself as a candidate for the presidency of American Leprosy Missions.
This year the American Leprosy Missions
(ALM) celebrates its 100th anniversary. I served as ALM's president during the years 1981 - 1984. It was one of
the most rewarding experiences of my missionary career. (In the photo above, I am examining the hand of a leprosy
sufferer in India.)
During my ternure as president, ALM led
the world in implementing the use of MDT -- multidrug therapy -- which, in the years since, has dramatically reduced
the incidence of leprosy throughout the world.
Two consequences ensued. The
first is that more and more leprosy sufferers are now being treated in local community health centers as part of an "integrated
care" model. The second is that ALM has begun to focus on people afflicted with Buruli, a terrible flesh-destroying
bacterium related to the baterium that causes leprosy.
Buruli afflicts mostly kids under 15 years
of age. The disease produces massive, painful ulcerations in various parts of the body, including the face.
At present there is no cure, only expensive surgery and hospitalization. ALM is working with MAP International to find
a way forward.
Most people afflicted with leprosy and
buruli are poor. Speaking to the first-century church in Smyrna, the Lord Jesus, "who died and came to life
again," said, "I know your affliction and your poverty -- yet you are rich!" Rich because through
the gospel they were experiencing that quality of life from God we call eternal. Surely this is what mission is all
about.
If you would like to make a donation to
ALM, click on the "favored links" button in the column to the left and above.
This past weekend I showed up at our church
basement at 11:45 pm to share midnight-to-8:00 am with ten homless men. Most were already asleep when I arrived.
My task was simply to stay awake all night in case of an emergency or to answer middle-of-the-night questions ("Where's the
bathroom?")
I doped myself up with strong, black coffee
and spent the next seven hours praying and reading my Bible, the journal Books & Culture, the New York Review of Books,
and some Herodotus' history.
Morning came. Donna and Melonie arrived
to prepare breakfast (scrambled eggs, sausages, lots of buttered bread, juice and coffee).
The men ate, we talked, then most of them left to walk the streets.
Three accepted our invitation to stay for the worship service.
There are more than three million homeless
men, women and children in the United States today. Back in the 1980s many of them were mentally ill. Today they
are more likely to be relatively healthy individuals who are simply down on their luck, as we used to say when I was a kid growing
up during the Depression of the 1930s.
Rising housing costs -- many people here
in Paterson, New Jersey pay fully half of their monthly income on rent -- unemployment, lack of medical insurance and, in
some cases, drug addiction combine to deprive inner city folk of permanent shelter.
Providing overnight shelter for fewer than
a dozen hardly makes a dent. But it's better than doing nothing. After all, Jesus himself admitted that at times
in his itinerant ministry he had no place to lay his head.
"If you have done it to one of the least
of these, you have done it unto me," he said.
