Nursing is a demanding profession even in the best of times. Those demands have skyrocketed over the past year as nurses and other health care workers have selflessly served on the front lines in the war on COVID-19.
Where do they turn for relief, renewal and encouragement? Among the many organizations seeking to respond to nurses’ personal and professional needs, one strikes especially close to home for many Baptist nurses — Baptist Nursing Fellowship.
Established in 1983, BNF provides missions opportunities, continuing education and fellowship for Christian nurses and allied health professionals in the U.S. and on missions fields around the world. A longtime ministry partner with national Woman’s Missionary Union, BNF’s official mission is to “empower, educate and encourage nurses to fulfill Christ’s mission through healing skills.”
As National Nurses Week was observed May 6–12, BNF focused on its two-year theme of “Touch Twice in Jesus’ Name.”
Highlighting both the physical and spiritual impact that Christian nurses can make, that theme has become especially meaningful in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The virus took a deeply personal toll on BNF members with the loss of BNF Executive Director Lori Spikes to COVID last fall. Spikes, a longtime Southern Baptist missionary to Chile, was a registered nurse with more than 40 years of experience in health care. She was elected as BNF’s executive director in 2018, just two years before her death.
“We prayed through the whole thing that God would spare Lori,” reflected BNF President Debby Akerman. “He chose to heal her in heaven.
“We miss her greatly,” Akerman added. “But we know that she’s not saying, ‘Gee, I wish I were back there doing BNF.’ She’s with the Lord. She served Him all her life.”
Serving others
That lifelong commitment to serving Christ by serving others is evident in the lives of nurses who have been involved in BNF over the years. From BNF founding president Dr. Ellen Tabor and charter member Melba Wilkerson to current president Akerman and president-elect Deborah Bolian, leaders and participants have maintained a clear focus on making a missions impact for the gospel.
Tabor, who passed away in 2019 at age 90, was actively involved in BNF throughout its history. In an interview during BNF’s 35th anniversary in 2018, she said her initial dream for BNF, “which we have kept the whole time, was that we would invite nurses who have a calling from God to use their nursing skills to advance His work whether in America or on the missions field.”
For Melba Wilkerson, the opportunities to participate in missions trips and serve alongside fellow Christian nurses are key benefits of her BNF involvement through the years.
“When you go on a missions trip, you can’t ever be the same again because you see different cultures and meet different people,” she noted, “I’ve got friends from everywhere and I consider that a blessing BNF has given me.”
Wilkerson recently was honored as one of the inaugural Nightingale members of BNF, a designation honoring BNF members who are age 80 or older and have been involved in the organization at least 15 years.
Affirming that “God has something great in our future,” Wilkerson said, “I just pray that as we do move forward we’ll allow God to direct us and show us what we need to do to continue to have this mission. I think nurses do need to understand that it’s a calling.”
For Akerman, missions is at the heart of the organization. As she and other BNF leaders met and strategized together, she said they agreed that “BNF would become the missions organization for nurses and allied medical caregivers.” Her goal, she added, is that “when people think BNF, they think missions.”
Akerman noted that BNF membership ranges from current and retired nurses and medical missionaries to allied medical professionals, student members and honorary members.
Looking to the future, she said one of her goals “is to see every Baptist college and university contacted and say, ‘If you want student nurses to be involved in missions, we’ve got an answer for you.’”
In addition to recruiting Christian nurses, she said physical therapists, pharmacists, emergency medical technicians and other health care workers are welcome to join BNF and share their expertise with the group.
“In all the medical teams I’ve ever been on, there’s always been someone who said, ‘I just don’t know what I’ll be able to do,’” she said, “and there’s something that comes along that only they can do.
“We’re going to be truly a missional nursing organization,” Akerman emphasized. “We need to make sure that our membership is discipled in missions as well. It will not be just, ‘Here’s a missions opportunity. Let’s go do it.’ It will be, ‘Let’s understand this and come alongside our missionaries so we meet their needs and the needs of the people.’”
Seeking to maintain BNF’s ministry focus even amid current social distancing, recent events have included an online continuing education event about telemedicine and the group’s first online virtual prayer meeting.
While the pandemic has impacted travel and missions opportunities, Akerman said she is encouraging members to “identify the places you will go so when this is done, you’re ready. You have put the teams together in your heart and in your mind, and they’re ready to go.”
Empowering nurses
Bolian, assistant professor of nursing at Mississippi College, will succeed Akerman as president during the group’s 2021 BNF Summit this fall.
“My vision for BNF is to continue to empower nurses to be missionaries for Christ,” she affirmed. “I believe God gave us that as a directive, and He has given us the tools” to accomplish that goal.
Bolian said her hope is that everyone involved in BNF “can have that joy of being able to go on a missions trip and serve Christ. I think that once you do that, you cannot dampen the fire that lights.”
This year’s BNF Summit will be held Nov. 4–7 at the WMU Building in Birmingham, Alabama. For more information about BNF, visit baptistnursingfellowship.com.
To see a video on BNF, visit tabonline.org/BNF.
