First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Dr. Bruce Steffes

Although a successful doctor and surgeon, Bruce felt his life was worthless and attempted suicide. Then, Christ rescued him and gave him a life of freedom and service to under-staffed hospitals in Africa. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 12 Nov 2010
Audio Format:: other

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I have the opportunity to work with the Lord God Almighty. He knows what I'm doing. He knows that He's sending a buffoon. That's okay. All I have to do is show up. And listen to what God is doing since the best decision I've ever made. Welcome to First Person, a weekly one-on-one conversation with a guest whose name you may or may not recognize, but someone whose life has been designed by God and lived as a testimony to the Lord's faithfulness. Before I introduce you to our guest today, let me remind you about our website, which will not only give you links to what we talk about today, but also let you hear previous interviews. We're found online at firstpersoninterview.com. There's also a calendar of upcoming guests and topics, firstpersoninterview.com. I'm Wayne Shepherd and I've known today's guests since high school days. We grew up in the same church, but then lost touch after leaving for college. We got reacquainted a few years ago and it was then I learned how successful Dr. Bruce Steffas had become as a doctor, but how desperate he was when that success brought him no joy. You'll hear him tell the rest of the story today as you listen, and then you'll want to follow our web links to his ministry today. Well, I called Bruce recently and asked him to describe his medical career, which looked on the outside to be so satisfying. Well, I was a surgeon here in Fayetteville, North Carolina for 16 years. But the story actually precedes that when I was in medical school and in residency at the University of Florida, there was really no Christian testimony. And so I became farther and farther alienated because I didn't have anybody to mentor me. And as I went along and came into practice, it was so easy to get further and further from the Lord. When I got into practice, I remember literally asking myself, how does one keep score now up to that time? It had been a diploma or another degree. But once you're in practice, it was very difficult. And the only thing that became a way to keep score was money. But that wasn't very fulfilling. And unfortunately, during that time, clinical depression set in. We had a series of problems as I got farther and farther from the Lord and ended up in a divorce and a loss of my family. And so I was in practice and loved parts of it, but hated other parts of it. During that time, the church-- well, as you know, the Christian army does a good job of shooting its wounded. And so I was pretty wounded to the point that I attempted suicide. And it got so bad. No one in town really knew that. I was doing a wonderful job. I was doing a great job of all the success that the world wants. But spiritually, I was spiraling down and down. And it had it not been for my unsafe friends. I'm not sure I would have survived. We put doctors in a pedestal, don't we? Yeah, we do. And it's very difficult to find someone in whom you can have a true friendship or accountability. One time, I came home about two in the morning, and I had tried everything. I threw myself on the couch, and I finally just said, Lord, I give up. You fix it, or you kill me. I don't really care which at this point. And there was the most overwhelming sense of God's presence, of his love, of his forgiveness. The kind of God that I had held in my mind all that time, I had grown up in a right-winged denomination that prided themselves that sometimes they were so narrow-minded they could see through a keyhole with both eyes. And we had legalism, but grace was never a major component of it. And all of my life, I had always felt that I had to work harder and harder and harder to get approval. And that was true for people, that was true for God. And suddenly, I realized in that one night, in that one blinding awareness, that God thought about me, he cared about me, loved me, and Christ loved me so much that he spread his arms out on the cross. I had been saved when I was a child, but that was almost more an intellectual awareness. I knew it was real, but that night was the night that I began to really realize who God was and that he loved me and that he cared for me. What changed then, Bruce? Self-esteem, as much as anything else. Not in the sense of arrogance, or it was just merely that I didn't have to prove anything to anybody except to God, and it became critical that the only thing I really needed was to hear "Well done, now good and faithful servant." You were free. I was free. And I realized that there's that popular song out a year or two ago where I fall down and I get up and I fall down and I get up and I fall down and I get up. And the nice thing about it is I always assumed before that when I fell down, I would be kicked while I was down. I could suddenly get up and realize that it was like when you have a child and he's learning to walk and they stumble. You don't go and kick him, you love him, you encourage him and I realize that God does that. Now, you know, God is still just. He's still all the other things, but for me that was not my problem. My problem was I never thought he was good, I never really thought he loved me. And so, that night suddenly, it made a difference. Over the next few years, God gave me a fellow Christian who was an accountability partner who taught me a great deal even though he was a very young Christian. And over the years, it became obvious that I had changed the way I thought, my priorities had changed, money had never really been important to me, but it became less so. But unfortunately, in our society, malpractice is a major problem. And so, over the years, I had some malpractice suits that were just getting oppressive and changing what I did. And finally, one night after a friend had a malpractice suit that had destroyed him and his family, I woke up thinking, "Well, gee, you know, if that happened to me, I wouldn't work for that patient's family forever." And then I fell back to sleep and then I woke back up and I said, "Well, if that's the case, then if I'm going to do some work like that, I'd have to do work that really meant something to me." And so, I woke back up about an hour later saying, "Well, it's obvious, even when he's not important to me, and I'm not doing what I should be doing or something that I want to do, then why am I doing this?" And I turned in my resignation to my junior partner the next morning. I thought I was absolutely nuts, and the problem was they asked me, "What are you going to do?" And I had this very astoundingly convincing answer, "I don't know." And the only thing I knew was just this most amazing piece that I was quitting to do what God had asked me to do, only he hadn't bothered to tell me what that was. And so, I was still and knew that he was God, and I didn't put out any feelers. I didn't do anything. I just said, "God, I'm here. You know where to find me. You've got my phone number. You can call me when you need me. You can talk to me if you wish." And so, I just rested, and I read, and I did all the thousand things that one needs to do when you find to get your first vacation. And suddenly, I got a phone call out of the middle of nowhere. This was a man who had been a chief resident when I was an intern. At that time, he certainly didn't love the Lord. I have no idea that he knew I was still alive. I had no idea how he got my phone number. I had no idea that he could possibly think I'd be interested in medical missions because I wasn't really interested in medical missions, except for kind of sounds like a neat thing to do. But he called me up and said, "Listen, I understand you're free," and I said, "Yes." And he said, "I want you to go with us to the Amazon River Basin. We're going to go to this little bitty hospital two thousand miles upstream, and I want you to come." I had been praying to God and asking for an answer. This was clearly his answer. It wasn't mine. It wasn't anything I had started up, so I said, "Well, okay." And over the next couple of weeks, I got another call to go with a different mission group to Uzbekistan of all places. And another person called me up and said, "Why don't you come talk to me?" And when I did, he said, "I have a friend who's going to be going around the world visiting various mission hospitals. I really think you ought to go." Boy, you needed a map, didn't you? Yeah, I did. Well, God was kind enough to give it to me, at least for that first opening. And the thing that was kind of interesting to me was that these were all things that God had come up with. These weren't mine. I wasn't going out seeking these things. As a matter of fact, I was beginning to wonder if I was a little bit crazy. At that time, Mickey, who I'm presently married to, called me up and said, "Listen, we had originally planned to get married a few years earlier, and it hadn't worked out." She called me up and said, "Listen, I think I've made a mistake, and I think we ought to get married." And I kind of laughed because before, I had a good job. I had plans. I was going somewhere now that I'm broke, don't have a job. She thinks it's a great idea to get married. So I said, "Well, we can do that, but you'll have to understand that our honeymoon is around the world mission trip." And she said, "Okay." And that's where it got started. And it started getting into medical missions. At that time, I was still thinking about buying a company in Germany that did advanced laparoscopic operating room design, something I'd had an interest in. But the Lord clearly shut that door, and he opened up the door in the missions. So did you think you might be dabbling and taking maybe short-term trips to hospitals, that kind of thing? Oh, yes, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I was making a deal with the Lord. Listen, you let me buy this company I want, and I only have to work half-time, and then I'll pay for my own finances, and I'll go half-time, and the really good thing Lord is, I don't really have to have trust in you because I'll be taking care of it myself. Okay? That's the way I think. That's the way we all tend to do. We won't do something unless we're somehow in control or we remove the need for faith. So yes, I was definitely going to dabble. I wasn't going to change my life. That would be crazy. Well, we'll continue this conversation in a moment. How does a doctor like Bruce Steffis end up in Africa? That's ahead here on First Person. Next week, we'll talk with musician and writer Michael Carr. I would love for people to say, you know, at the end of my life, to say, you know, not oh, wow, that was a great song, but to say, yeah, I engage with the Bible differently because, you know, I cross paths with this guy, that would be a great thing. People hear a candid conversation with Bible teacher Michael Carr, whose music and books continue to feed our soul with God's Word. That's next week here on First Person. I'm Wayne Shepard. My guest today is Dr. Bruce Steffis. Once he got his life's priorities straightened out with Christ, he found himself in Africa and I talked to Bruce about that. I began to see what God sees with his heart, with his eyes, and I saw not only the people who needed Jesus Christ, but God gave me a special heart for those people who are serving. Now, you've served in a number of different hospitals across the continent of Africa and on Mercy Ships and other places, describe some of these hospitals to us. What are they like and what are the staffs like? Most of the hospitals are in the range of 30 to 400 beds. They are very limited in their resources. The people are not well trained. They often are not training programs in these countries. The level of nursing is certainly less than what we would expect here in the United States. As far as facilities, there isn't a single one of them that would come up to the level of the average community hospital in a small town. So they are places where resources are tight, people are tight, the need is phenomenal. Because of those limited resources and because of that limited money, one of the constant battles that you have to fight is the fact that as a surgeon here in the United States, I have virtually unlimited resources and unlimited equipment, and so I can always do something, whether I should or not, it's another question, but I can always do something. But there, I was faced with the fact that many of these conditions, I didn't know how to treat, they were outside of my area of specialty, I didn't have the ICUs, I didn't have the anesthesia support, and yet if I didn't do something, when they left, they were most likely going to go home and die, it literally shook my world so much so that I came home from the very first trip and I said I'm not doing this again, why would I put myself in a situation where I feel this bad, but the problem is the eyes of the people stayed in my mind and in my heart, and so I went back and I went back and I went back and as I faced these challenges, I began to write some of the answers down, because I knew I wasn't the only one challenged by this, and I talked to other people, and out of that came a handbook, which has subsequently been rewritten, but a handbook for people like myself who are saying, you know, I'm a medical person from the United States, how can I handle this, what are the answers intellectually, what are the answers theologically, how can I justify this, and when I don't have an answer, how do I keep going? We'll put information about that book and others that you've done on the website, firstpersoninterview.com, but you said that God not only gave you a heart to serve the patients, and I've seen some of the photos, I've followed your email reports through the years, it's amazing what you've done, but He also gave you a heart for the staff at these facilities in Africa in particular, talk to me about the people there who serve. My particular emphasis or interest has been in the missionaries themselves. It turns out that the average missionary right now stays on the field only about 7.4 years, and the average medical missionary stays on the field only 4.7 years. Do they burn out? They burn out. That's the major component, family issues, time issues, money issues, all those things. There are such tremendous things that one can do if one is interested in encouraging somebody, much like when you fell in love with somebody, you could think of a thousand little things that you could do to please them, and yet our missionaries, many times, are over there for months, weeks, years, and then don't hear from their churches, don't hear from their friends. We're tired spiritually, we think of them as spiritual giants, and most are, but they've been doing home cooking, they're sometimes really having difficulty just getting in God's Word and letting that refresh them. Then what can be done about that? What can we do to encourage and lengthen their term of service when they want to stay, but they just bump into these obstacles? There are certain things that, of course, we're not going to be able to address cultural issues, things like that, those you just have to live through. What we have to do is look at the things we can address. Can we keep them prayed for? Absolutely. Can we ensure that they have enough rest when they come home on furlough? Yes. Can we prevent them from being so frustrated because they don't have enough money to do the resources to take care of the people? I have been in a situation where I have this little child in my hands and watch it die in my arms because I don't have $10 worth of medicine. It just isn't available and that hospital hasn't been. That is something that we can do something about. Now, what about the fact that they're forgotten? Well, first of all, with Skype and email, there's no excuse for that. We can all drop a letter. We can all write a letter. I saw a quote about a week ago from a Chinese missionary in the 1700s who said, "I've written hundreds of letters, and I got your letter yesterday. Thank you so much. It's only the second one I've ever received." You think, "Well, that's pathetic, but that was 200 years ago." No, it's not. It's the way it is now as well. Now, when that missionary has a birthday or an anniversary, can we make a difference? Can we help them remember that they're there? Can we pray for them? When they come home, can we help them with the car they need? Can we help them with their taxes? Can we help them with their—just getting a phone, getting their internet hooked on? When they're over there, can we take care of those things for them? Can we watch out their parents for them? These are things that sometimes are so severe for a given missionary that that's why they leave the country. They just can't handle it. We can take their back. We can watch out for them. We can love their loved ones for them. I know that's a great concern of yours, but you're also concerned, are you not for doctors and nurses to be trained in Africa to staff these facilities? Absolutely. In Africa right now, if you're the average African, if we take an average of all of Africa, there is one surgeon of any kind. I'm not talking about one specialist of every kind, but one surgeon of any kind for every 250,000 people, there in the rural areas is only one surgeon for every two and a half to three million people. What that means is that one out of every 10 adults who die for the lack of basic general surgery, they die of a hernia or appendicitis or ruptured typhoid. If they have—if you're a child, you have a one in five chance dying of something that should be easily fixable. Most women, the vast majority of women who need a C-section don't get it. There's a tremendous need for surgery in Africa, and since that's what I know how to do, that's what we are trying to teach. Dave Thompson, who was a missionary in Gabon, he is in a hospital called Bongolow Hospital in La Bamba, and that's about four or five hours further into the bush than Dr. Schweitzer's famous hospital at Lumberini, but Dave realized in the mid-90s that he was much like throwing a rock into a pond. When he died, the ripples go away and he hadn't left anything. He began to talk to missionaries at a big medical conference that is held for missionaries every other year in Kenya, and 10 hospitals came up and they said this is a great idea, but for one reason or another, none of them could join him, and so he started training his first resident by himself. In 2002, we added another program, and now we're up to eight hospitals that are training 34 residents. These are all African residents. They will stay in Africa for Africa for a lifetime, but it's not just a training of surgeons. This is a discipling. We are teaching them to be God's man, God's woman in this situation, so that these people are having a major impact. Every one of our residents who is out of training is in rural Africa staying there, and many of them are once again the only surgeon for every two to three million people, but they're having a major impact teaching them about Christ at the same time that they're healing them. This is Christ's ministry. Christ took care of both the spiritual and the physical, and we're teaching them to do the same thing. Bruce, I don't know what your next assignment is, but looking back over how God has led you these past a number of years now and the multiple places you've been and the needs that you've seen, are you, in any way, regretting the decision that you made? I do not regret the decision. I regret that it took me so long to understand the need to make it. It's the best thing that I've ever done. Income, I'm down 90, 95%, but the Lord is taking care of everything that we've needed. We still pay too much property taxes, we still have to worry about losing weight, we still have all that we need, and yet I often become somewhat guilty about what we have and what God has provided us. This is the best thing I've ever done, and the problem is that sometimes as you try to tell people what it means to you, it's much like listening, I suppose, to a reformed smoker, you know, all the good things that have happened. And for me, it's not a matter of saying that you're doing it wrong. I'm just telling you, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. Yes, it seems frightening, but God is who He is, and He promises what He promises, and it turns out that He's faithful, and that's the exciting thing about it, just to see what God is doing. I have the opportunity to work with the Lord God Almighty, the Creator of the universe. He knows what I'm doing, He has, as Ephesians 2-10 says, prepared the way for me. He's taking care of all this. He knows that He's sending a buffoon, that's okay. All I have to do is show up and listen to what God is doing. Look at things with His eyes, and it's the best decision I've ever made. Show up and look at things with God's eyes, it's the best decision any of us could make. My guest today on First Person has been Dr. Bruce Stefas, and since we ran out of time before we had a chance to talk about a very important project Bruce is working on, I invite you to join us on our website, FirstPersonInterview.com, for the rest of the conversation. You'll learn about an exciting project in African hospitals. Listen online at FirstPersonInterview.com You'll also find the archive of past programs there at the website, and a schedule of upcoming guests. Next week I'll be back in the studio once again with good friend Michael Card, Michael Card tell a little of his story, and then bring us up to date with the Biblical Imagination Project. That's next week here on First Person. Now with gratitude to my friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Thanks for listening to First Person. [Music]