"After the gunfire, I found myself face down on the pavement, " recalls a paralyzed teen now lying on a hospital Gurney. A few years earlier, the Los Angeles motorcycle-club member had been shot in the back after a friend's birthday party. Peptic stomach ulcers caused by too much Motrin brought him to today's evaluation.

"What were you thinking while lying on the pavement?"the doctor asks while prepping him for the procedure. "Oh, God, please let me live!" recalls the youth."Did God answer your prayer?" "I guess so. I'm here, aren't I?" "I'm glad you are. Do you think God has something in mind for you?" About that time the anesthetic kicks in and the boy goes under.

Such are the conversations between Dr. Yang Chen and his patients at Loma Linda University Medical Center. "When I address spiritual needs," says the gastrointestinal specialist, "I can't always finish the conversation. But that shouldn't keep me from getting started. I just pick up during the next visit and leave those results to God."

In a field where busyness, materialism, competition and egos can suffocate a believing professional, Yang clings to advice he received at a Christian conference during his pre-med days: "You haven't changed a thing until you've changed a life." As Yang looks at how best to invest his time and talent, he continually asks, "What kind of impact is this making upon the life of a specific individual?" That advice has helped him separate the good things from the best.

In Yang's economy, the best things for changing lives (besides his personal ministry to students and colleagues) include building a network of like-minded medical professionals and training them to integrate faith and practice through Medical Evangelism Training and Strategies conferences. "Medical professionals," says the 44-year-old, "have a unique platform to share the gospel. Not only do they occupy a position of respect in the community, but they also have a unique relationship with the patient. Patients come to them at a point of need: They're often much more open to examine their priorities in life."

It is then the duty of Christian medical professionals to treat the whole person - not just his physical symptoms. "It's much easier to just deal with the complaint, write a prescription and move on," Yang says. "But for a Christian doctor who really understands his calling, he will find that patients are very, very responsive to hope in Christ." Take the hepatitis C patient he recently treated at the Loma Linda clinic, for example. "I'll do whatever you tell me," said the affected man bleakly; "you're like God." Yang dismissed the comparison but asked if he wanted to know the Great Physician. The man nodded, and Yang walked him through the Four Spiritual Laws booklet and into God's kingdom.

Although more than 2,000 medical professionals have attended the METS conferences since 1988, only a fraction of health-care workers, Yang believes, integrate doctoring and doctrine. Many Christians exchange their faith at the hospital door for a white coat and stethoscope. Or they feel bullied by the hospital administration or colleagues who scoff at mixing spiritual and physical. Some are ill-equipped to talk about Christ with their patients.

The METS conferences help Christian health-care professionals rethink their calling in light of eternity. Instead of relegating their best ministry time to after hours, Dr. Chen challenges the conferees to see their whole life as an act of worship. "I don't see the practice of medicine as being in competition to serving the Lord," explains the Chinese-born specialist. "It is my practice that gives me a platform to reach people who would never walk through a church door. I see myself as a missionary and, incidentally, a health professional."

Determining how to live in light of eternity kept Dr. Scott Strum in medicine. As a fourth year student frustrated with the government's growing control of health care, and having trouble finding his niche, Scott felt uncertain about his future. "As I was evaluating what to do," remembers the assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine, "I realized that medicine is an unusually good platform for sharing the gospel and that God had a role for me in doing so.

"Before I got involved with METS at Loma Linda, I wanted to share my faith with my patients; I just wasn't quite sure how to do it. I doubt that I would have considered staying in medicine if I had not had the experience of seeing people come to Christ."

At the METS conferences, training medical professionals to take a "spiritual inventory" turns willing doctors like Scott into confident and credible evangelists. Physicians routinely ask a series of questions to make diagnoses. Spiritual inquiries fall comfortably into that sequence: "Have you ever experienced this stomach pain before?" "How do you deal with stress?" "Are you interested in exploring how God might be able to help you cope with this?" By asking questions and, therefore, respecting the patients' autonomy, the physician remains ethically, professionally and biblically sound.

"A person's physical, emotional, social and spiritual well-being are all linked together," says Yang. "I cannot deal with one aspect of a person's health and ignore the other issues. It is very natural for me to incorporate all that is relevant to my patient care."

Doctors learn medicine by watching; it's a mentor-mimicking process. But even after years of training, most medical professionals have never witnessed a Christian physician integrate his faith with his field. So the conference faculty role-play real-life scenarios. Afterward, the visiting doctors actually go out and practice the spiritual inventory in an approved, local hospital. If a person skips this practical time, Yang is convinced, he will never do anything with the seminar content.

Dr. Don Wood, president of the Christian Medical and Dental Society, found the practical training a watershed experience. As part of a 1990 METS conference in the Philippines, the oncology surgeon traveled from bed to bed in a local hospital, inquiring as to the cancer patients' conditions. Don then asked permission to tell them of something that had brought him a sense of healing and wholeness. After two-and-a-half hours, five patients trusted Christ. I have to come 8,000 miles from home to lean how to win people to Christ! Don thought.

When METS graduate Dr. David Tellez of Phoenix Children's Hospital learned to share his faith, he was so excited he couldn't wait for the next day's hospital visit. That same night, David and his wife asked her sister to meet them at Bob's Big Boy for dessert. For the first time, David explained the salvation message to his sister-in-law, and she placed her faith in Christ. "Since then," says the pediatric intensive-care specialist, "I've shared the gospel with more people than I can remember. I've come to realize that it doesn't matter if they receive Christ. But it does matter whether I do it or not."

As life-changing as the METS conference may be, Yang's dream goes further. "I want to see Christian health professionals equipped and mobilized to win the world and to see the Great Commission fulfilled in the health-care profession."

The advice he received as a student echoes through the years: "You haven't changed a thing until you've changed a life."