In our postmodern thinking we are in danger, even in our churches, of replacing the concept of sin with insecurity and salvation with psychotherapy. The treatment for this insecurity only relieves symptoms and may hide the cause of a spiritual disease which eventually proves fatal.

Healthcare is caught up in this same deceptive cultural process. When the search for truth is abandoned, so are both the word of God and the scientific method on which healthcare was once based. Today there are medical students who are disillusioned by their experiences while training. Medicine no longer appears to be a vocation. Some are looking for an alternative way of fulfilment in worship or in Bible College. But if Christian healthcare with mission is to be a partner to evangelism, the healthcare must, like the theology, possess its own integrity.

In the past, when God's people abandoned him, their relationship was only restored after a eneration or two had died in the desert or captive in a foreign land. We must ask God to restore Christian values and motivation to healthcare. If not, we may have to live and work under some unsympathetic world power that is less decadent than our own society.

Healthcare with mission therefore has a dual role - to restore integrity to science -based healthcare and to participate in Christ's mission to a disintegrating world. This was the challenge of the International Christian Medical and Dental Association congress held in Durban in July, reported in this issue by Janet Goodall.