Putting Christianity to Work (from God's Word Among Us)

by Kate Ernsting

Few can boast of being busier than a physician with a general practice that serves families. Nevertheless, Daniel Heffernan, M.D., seems to have found the time to start two medical clinics and a full-service agency to serve the poor. The Catholic doctor said the motivation to help the needy in southeastern Michigan came from the not-so-subtle prodding of the Holy Spirit.
“I certainly don’t have a direct line to God, but I have had the good fortune to have God speak to me through other people. I believe he works that way much of the time,” he said. The urging of Christian friends who saw a need helped him pay attention to the possibilities and give them a try. The results amazed him. “If you look for a need and try to fill it, things will start happening. God does it.”
While maintaining a full-time practice, Heffernan spent more than thirty-five years offering his medical services to those who couldn’t afford to pay. Now retired, he still serves as president and medical director of Hope Clinic, a medical and social work agency whose mission is to serve its clients “from an interdenominational, Christ-centered perspective.”
A “Fat Cat” Gets Mobilized. Hope Clinic, with its multifaceted outreach, grew out of a half-day medical clinic which Heffernan began twenty years ago to offer medical care to the indigent. Now Hope Clinic offers to three thousand clients a year medical and dental care, a laundry service, emergency food, transportation and basic household items, utility shut-off and eviction prevention, and prescription assistance. All of this is served up by an agency that treats its clients like family, offering on-request prayer, Scripture study, and a network of supportive relationships.
What has developed, according to Hope Director Cathy Robinson, is a venture that seeks to meet both material and spiritual needs, and that empowers individual Christians to join in. “It’s very much a part of our mission to minister to the whole person. We don’t only address material needs, such as poverty. We offer God’s love and support. We don’t have to pursue this angle with people, it happens naturally,” Robinson explained.
Heffernan said none of it would have happened if God hadn’t made his desire for a personalized outreach to the poor abundantly clear. Heffernan had been practicing medicine for about ten years when he had his first opportunity to serve the needy. He was living in central Michigan with his wife, Beverly, and four children. A local priest introduced them to a community of Mexican-American migrants who came to Michigan to harvest the sugarbeet crop.
“We would visit, take some of them to church. Our kids would play ball with their kids. I saw they had a terrible need for medical care that was completely unmet,” Heffernan said. So he and one of his nurses drove a station wagon with “vitamins and antibiotics and Ace bandages” out to the migrants weekly. Many volunteer health workers pitched in.
A few years later, the Heffernans moved to Ann Arbor (near the city of Detroit) so that Dan could join a practice with other Christian physicians. All was going smoothly until Heffernan went on a retreat with some members of the ecumenical prayer group he belonged to.
“I visited the chapel and prayerfully received the strong impression that I was becoming a ‘fat cat.’ It was as if the Lord was telling me, ‘I don’t have any use for fat cats.’ ”
Heffernan asked God to show him what he should do. Within a short time, three people he knew approached him with unsolicited suggestions, none of them aware of his prayer to God. “One asked if I could come down to minister to prisoners in the jail. Another wondered if I had considered starting a free medical clinic. Another shared a very personal experience that made me realize I should take God’s call to be generous very seriously.”
Heffernan did start visiting the jails with a deacon from his parish. With help from members of his parish and prayer group, he opened a medical clinic for the indigent in Ypsilanti, a small city located between Ann Arbor and Detroit. “We got started with a Saturday morning walk-in clinic. Some women started sending home-baked bread and rolls. Soon, someone else was sending fresh eggs. Without me even thinking about it, our food bank began.”
Soon, other doctors and dentists joined him. “It takes some doing to convince a doctor to use his spare time to practice medicine,” laughed Heffernan. “But those who help out at our clinics are very generous.”

Pitching In. At least two dozen agencies work with Hope to share resources, referrals, and services. Eileen Spring, who directs Food Gatherers, the area’s largest food bank, said her agency has worked with Hope for more than ten years. “Hope Clinic is one of Food Gatherers’ critical partners in hunger relief,” she said. Many churches of all denominations and local organizations—from Girl and Boy Scouts to college student service groups—became involved.
Fr. James McDougall, pastor of St. Francis of Assisi, the area’s largest Catholic parish, said he believes Hope “does an excellent job working with the poor. We do all we can to support them, not only financially but also by making sure that the people in our parish—especially professionals—know about Hope so they can share their talents and gifts and so build up the body of Christ.”
Volunteers became the backbone of the organization, and a volunteer coordinator, Jean Horak, was hired. “I was a software developer, but I began to want to change careers. I wanted to do something different that I couldn’t quite define.” Already volunteering at Hope, Horak began working there full-time in 1998 and decided this was her new career.
Hope volunteers provide more than 1,000 hours a month, including professional care hours donated by 55 practitioners, 40 nurses, and 80 other specialists last year.
Many who are helped by Hope give back by becoming volunteers themselves, Horak said. Linda Rucker came to Hope when she developed a disability and needed to wait eighteen months for her benefits to come through. Hope also helped her daughter and grandson. Now she volunteers frequently to give something back. “Dr. Dan—he saved me. He took me as a patient and got my medicine started up again.”

A Feast for the Hungry. Another volunteer who was also a Hope client is Paul Metler, the culinary expert who provided the vision behind Oasis Café, Hope’s restaurant, which opened in February 2001. Ten years ago, Metler was cooking for wealthy business clients at a fine restaurant and helping cook a Saturday meal for the homeless.
“I was serving the wealthy and seeing what the poor were getting. It didn’t seem equitable,” said Metler. “I went to my church for donations so we could make nicer meals. That led to the idea of giving needy folk a way to eat at restaurants and not have to eat fast food.”
But then Metler was laid off from his job and suddenly had to depend on food banks for himself, his wife, and four children. “It was humiliating,” he admitted. “The help from Hope and from my church was the only thing that wasn’t humiliating.”
Metler discovered that Hope was different from other social service agencies he dealt with at this time. “The difference is the presence of Jesus. At the other agencies, it’s about what you do, not who you are. Even in some Christian agencies, asking for help is like applying for a loan. You almost have to prove you don’t need help to get it.”
This experience made Metler even more determined to make his vision of the restaurant a reality. “Having experienced both wealth and poverty, I wanted to figure out a way in my mind to bring one to the other,” Metler explained. “That’s how this came about. I have several friends who are in country clubs. They are able to enjoy certain things because they have the privilege of being members.”
At Oasis, he said, the wait-staff work for free and donate all the tips of the paying customers to a fund that gives needy people the privilege of eating at a seventy percent discount. “This is sort of a country club in reverse—the poor get the card, the rich pay for the poor to eat,” he said.
Now a downtown businessman has donated computers and a local phone company a DSL line to make Oasis an Internet café. A group of Ypsilanti businessmen and an interdenominational group of pastors hold their regular meetings there.
One local pastor, Rev. Mike Frison of Knox Presbyterian Church, likes to take new members of his church to Oasis for lunch. It’s a place where “they can see Christianity at work,” he says.
Another regular diner at Oasis is Hope Clinic’s founder, Dr. Heffernan, who says he is delighted that the restaurant is breaking new ground. “We had been looking for a way to feed the poor with dignity, when Paul Metler came along, and it all came together.”
“Lots of Christians want to serve the poor,” he added, “but they don’t know how to make it happen. Hope Clinic is simply an avenue, but it’s one that more and more Christians in our area are using.”

Kate Ernsting lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.