Patti-Guthrie

Patti Guthrie

Volunteers as a community health educator and lay Bible worker for her home church. She also serves as editor of the Medical Evangelist. The love of Christ motivates her to serve, recognizing that ” if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Corinthians 5:14, 15. She and her physician husband Todd live in Northern California. They have four adult children.

Ministry Expands with God as Partner

in Fall 2021   |
Published on 09/01/2021   |
6 min | <<|>>

When Dr. Robert Ford became the sole owner of Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute (PCLI) in 1995, one of his first actions was to ask God to be his Senior Business Partner.

Based in Chehalis, Washington, the practice has grown to over 600 staff, including 38 optometrists and 14 eye surgeons operating at 17 locations in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. Dr. Ford has found the most efficient means of mobilizing surgery staff to provide help for the more distant surgery centers is via private jet.

Paul Chung, MD, has worked for PCLI since 2001. He observes, “Dr. Ford has created a work environment that clearly upholds our church’s beliefs, such as no work on Sabbath hours, yet he honors people’s individual convictions by not forcing or coercing anyone to become an Adventist. Employees feel like they are free. They don’t feel pressured to believe the way Dr. Ford does.”

From the outset praying with patients has been a priority for Dr. Ford.

In more recent years he felt convicted to share Doug Batchelor’s book The Richest Caveman. Initially, his office mailed the Caveman book to each surgery patient after their first surgery. It included a mail-in offer for the Great Controversy, a special edition of which has been prepared using New King James Version Bible references along with many beautiful pictures and illustrations. Presenting the Caveman book along with something useful like a PCLI cap or insulated water bottle made the gift more desirable. Now, every patient receives a gift bag at their first surgery.

Since PCLI started doing this about 15 years ago, approximately 270,000 Caveman books have been distributed along with fulfillment of 11,000 Great Controversy book requests.

One patient writes: “Thank you so much for the book, The Richest Caveman. I was truly blessed by it. Even tears flowed as I read it. I could not put it down after I started reading it. God is so good. Who is so great a God as our God? It’s a gift I treasure more than I can say. Thank you, again! P.S. I am sending for the book Great Controversy. Thank you.”

Building his business with God as his Partner, Dr. Ford says, has been exciting and rewarding, “but not without stress and seemingly insurmountable difficulties. However, countless challenges have resolved when I leaned heavily on God. What I perceive as major predicaments often turn into great blessings.”

On the PCLI website page which introduces him as owner, Dr. Ford openly shares, “I am a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.”

He invites those who may be “interested or just curious,” to click on a link which takes them to a page that tells more about who Seventh-day Adventist Christians are and what they believe.

With God serving as his Senior Business Partner, Dr. Ford has made sharing his faith an integral part of his business ethic.

“We work as a team and discuss ways of doing things more effectively,” Dr. Chung says.

For example, they have found that some methods work better than others when asking patients if they would like prayer before surgery.

Dr. Chung explains that when a patient is checked in for eye surgery, they are told that the surgeon would like to pray with them. Then they are asked, ‘Would you be comfortable with that?’

If the patient says, “Yes,” then the monitor screen in the operating room indicates their desire for prayer and the surgeon prays with the patient before the surgery begins.

“We’ve tried other approaches,” Dr. Chung says. “If we wait until the patient is draped and ready for surgery and the surgeon comes and says, ‘May I pray with you?’ Then sometimes the patient will feel anxious and say, ‘Why? Do you need it?’”

A patient from Bellevue, Washington, wrote, “As a Christian, I am mostly impressed with the fact that before the procedures, the surgeons I had both asked the Lord to be with us and to guide their hands in the surgery. I’ve never had any other doctors ever pray over me! I felt very safe and confident in the outcome.”

Dr. Chung said that staff members have observed over time that the likelihood of a patient saying yes to prayer is affected by other factors as well. In large cities people are much less apt to agree than patients in more rural areas. Also, some of the intake staff are more adept at soliciting a positive response than others.

The full impact of these seed sowing efforts cannot be measured in this life, but even now a glimpse of the future reward is seen in responses such as this: “I have never seen such a truly amazing and thoughtful thank you ‘package’ from anyone I have ever paid for any kind of product or services. Thank you for sending me a wonderfully composed letter and amazing book.”

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