Salvation with a Smile by Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Author:Phillip Luke Sinitiere [Sinitiere, Phillip Luke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL070000 Religion / Christianity / General
Publisher: NYU Press

Medicine, Missions, and Miracles: Paul Osteen

Paul Osteen is the oldest of John and Dodie’s children. He joined Lakewood’s staff shortly after his brother assumed the position of head pastor. A medical doctor with extensive experience in numerous surgical procedures, previously Paul had his own medical practice in Arkansas. At Lakewood he focused on equipping others for leadership and participating in ministries of caring and encouragement. In a 2004 sermon, for example, Paul used the New Testament passage of Matthew 28 about Jesus’ teaching on burdens and rest to admonish Lakewood members to slow down their lives, take time to pray, and “find balance” in everyday life. Eventually, Paul zeroed his attention on medical missionary work. His sermons on the subject included a message on the New Testament story of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10, and he counseled listeners to pay attention to the needs of those around them, and to help in the midst of difficulties and struggles. This philosophy influenced the rationale he adopted to undertake global missionary work. As a neopentecostal Christian, Paul believed heartily in the power of miracles and supernatural work and his travel reports from missionary trips regularly explained fortuitous material circumstances as divinely planned. Yet, as a surgeon, Paul also possessed knowledge that medicine played a decisive role in health outcomes. Merging his interests of medicine and missions, Paul, along with his wife Jennifer, a registered nurse, set out to traverse the globe in search of miracles and healing. Starting in 2008, Paul and his family began to chronicle their travels via web updates about their global medical excursions to Africa and the Caribbean.38

Paul’s reports generally reflected positive outcomes emblematic of short-term Christian missionary travels (STM). It is also the case that the expansive budget of Lakewood Church played a vital role in the self-reported “successes” of Paul’s medical missions. While Paul attributed the triumphant medical outcomes of his missionary travels to divine intervention, and drew out spiritual lessons from the evangelistic activities in which he engaged, anthropologists point to how overwhelmingly positive STM reports overlook and simplify the historical and operational legacies of Western imperialism in places such as Africa and Asia. Moreover, scholars also show how funding from the mammoth budgets of American megachurches necessarily influence the “social organization of missions,” again complicating contemporary cross-cultural encounters in light of Western colonialism’s history. Thus, while Paul’s STM writings leave the impression of deeply rewarding and prosperous missionary work, his travelogues document substantial transnational connections between Lakewood Church and global ministries—what sociologist Robert Wuthnow terms “boundless faith”—and offer a clear window into understanding how his work has exemplified Lakewood’s charismatic core. To date, Paul’s medical missionary travels have focused on Cameroon, in western equatorial Africa, and Kenya, on the eastern side of the continent. Following the 2010 earthquake, he also traveled to Haiti with Samaritan’s Purse, the missionary organization led by Billy Graham’s son, Franklin.39

In Kenya, Paul’s work took place at Tenwek Hospital, a facility located in the western part of the country. On the left side of the hospital sign, it reads “We Treat,” on the right side, “Jesus Saves.

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