The Christian Call to Social Justice

The Electives Handbook

A student elective is a great opportunity to do something different and learn new things. It's a chance to see life and medicine in another setting and to look at the world from a different perspective. For some students, it's an experience that changes the way they live and shapes their future.

Deciding what to do, where to go and how to get there can seem a daunting task. This handbook for medical and other healthcare students has been written to help you think through the options and issues. It gives information and advice to guide you through the process, from finding a placement, to setting off and finally coming home.

Short-Term Medical Work

Short-term medical visits can be a valuable and inspiring learning experience for the visitor and can make a useful contribution to medical work overseas, but trips that have not been well-planned and thought-through can cause problems. This booklet will help doctors planning a short-term visit to think through the issues involved and avoid the pitfalls. It provides guidelines for good medical practice in low-income settings so that visitors are a help and not a hindrance, can make the most of their visit.

A free pdf version is available to download here.

Travelling Light

Daily Bible meditations for student electives

Travelling Light - a companion for your elective helping you:

• shine the light of God's word on your experiences
• look at people and places through God's eyes
• readings and reflections by professionals who've gone before you
• encouragement, insight and fresh challenges.

Working Abroad

I Could Do That!

I could do that!

Most missionary books leave us feeling that health professionals who work overseas in developing countries are spiritual superheroes, a different breed. In short, 'I couldn't do that!'

These 15 short accounts turn that right round. They include

• newly qualified newly weds
• an 88 year old who could serve abroad
• nurses working in Africa and Asia
• an OT in South America and a dentist doing development
• a woman who moved cross-culturally within India
• a refugee camp paediatrician
• early retired GPs majoring on medical education

One story at least must make you say: 'I could do that!'

This title is available to UK & Irish CMF students at a discounted price via the Take and Read pages

Can it be Me?

The Hole in Our Gospel

Over ten years ago, Richard Sterns came face to face with that question as he sat in a mud hut in Rakai, Uganda, listening to the heartbreaking story of an orphaned child. Stern's journey there took much more than a long flight to Africa. It took answering God's call on his life, a call that tore him out of his corner office at one of America's most prestigious corporations – to walk with the poorest of the poor in our world.

The Hole in Our Gospel is the compelling true story of a corporate CEO who set aside worldly success for something far more significant, and discovered the full power of the gospel of Jesus Christ to change his own life. He uses his journey to demonstrate how the gospel – the whole gospel – was always meant to be a world changing social revolution, a revolution that begins with us

Generous Justice

Isn't it full of old-fashioned views? Didn't it condone slavery? Why look to the Bible for guidance in building a more just society today?

But Timothy Keller sees it differently, In GENEROUS JUSTICE, he explores how to live a life of justice empowered by an experience of grace: a generous, gracious justice. Keller calls on the life-long Christians to acknowledge the fraudulence of a faith without concern for justice for the poor – and challenges sceptics to recognise that the Bible can and must contribute to a modern understanding of justice.

Good News to the Poor

Throughout history, men and women such as Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, Carey and Booth have recognised a call to help the needy. Others have argued that our first task is evangelism, that Christian should not meddle in politics, that social action is a distraction. Do we serve Christ through preaching his Word, or should we use words only when necessary?

Tim Chester argues passionately that evangelism and social action are inseparable as two arms of the church's mission. He presents a biblical case for truly evangelical social action that is shaped and inspired by the cause of the oppressed, and those involved in social action not to neglect the preaching of the Word.