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With Georgie Coster
83 Plays3 years ago
Medical professions can often be useful for overseas mission work, but today's guest tells us all about the mission field here in today's NHS. In her work with the Christian Medical Fellowship, we hear about how young doctors and nurses are learning to share their faith - and seeing God at work!
Georgie Coster is an intensive care nurse in the English Midlands and Associate Head of Nurses and Midwives at the Christian Medical Fellowship.
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Guest
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Christie and I'm joined by the bombastic Andy Bannister all the way from Dundee. Andy, how are you doing? Oh bombastic is the word, Christie, because the sun is shining. It only happens a couple of days a year in Scotland, but the sun is shining.
00:00:29
Speaker
And what is not to like Scotland in the sunshine? Well, the footy results could be better. But you know, Scotland's a national morning because of what happened a couple of nights before,
Georgie's Role at CMF
00:00:38
Speaker
right? It's a rule zone here, really. Anyway, I can't say. We get to chat with Georgie Cottner. Georgie, welcome. Hello, it's so great to meet you.
00:00:47
Speaker
Thank you. Georgie, you are, now let me see if I can remember this rightly, you kindly just gave us a wonderful kind of, and precious to who you are and what you're up to. You're a part-time nurse,
00:01:00
Speaker
an intensive care and you're also an associate for CMF as the head of nurses and midwives or associate head of nurses and midwives. Yes, that is the one, that is the one. If my boss who is the head listens to this then I have to make it very clear that I am associate head. I'm here like wing woman, yeah. Brilliant. Good recovery, good recovery.
00:01:26
Speaker
Folks who are not familiar, by the way, with that, what is CMF? Because, you know, we throw that term around like we know it. But folks who are like, what are those three letters? What is CMF? Yeah, good question. It stands for the Christian Medical Fellowship. So it's
00:01:43
Speaker
aim is to unite and equip Christian doctors and nurses and midwives to live and speak for Jesus Christ and so we do that in a number of ways but essentially it's a fellowship, a family, it's a membership organisation so Christian doctors, nurses, midwives and other healthcare professionals can join as members and
From Missionary Aspirations to Nursing Career
00:02:05
Speaker
then we just really want to unite and equip them to live for Jesus, not just on Sundays, but in the everyday of working in medicine, in nursing, in midwifery and in healthcare.
00:02:17
Speaker
What a glorious vision, Georgie, and particularly thinking about what it looks like as Christians to, I guess, to hold out the word of life in the workplace. Can you just tell us a little bit about your background? Like, how did you get into nursing? What does that look like for you on a day-to-day basis?
00:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, well, I never, you sometimes you meet these girls who's like, their mums are nurse, their nams are nurse, the great nams are nurse, and like their nursing genealogy goes back to Florence Nightingale, but that's, there's no medics in my family. And I was always pretty squeamish as a child. And so I became a Christian out of a non Christian family, which is another story.
00:03:01
Speaker
But that happened when I was almost 15. And from that point on, I was just so zealous and naive that I really thought, I don't need to go to university. I don't need to get a normal job. All I want to do is be a missionary. And from as far back as I can remember, from like the first time I heard a missionary come to church and speak, that was all I wanted to do. So
00:03:27
Speaker
my mum who is at this point not a Christian and has just had this daughter who is like living in wild rebellion and then suddenly overnight becomes this like raging
00:03:39
Speaker
Jesus love it. But my mum really had high hopes for me academically, and she really wanted me to go to uni and get a good job. And so you can imagine the clash when I said that I'm just going to go to the jungle, and I don't need a degree.
Nursing as a Mission Field
00:03:55
Speaker
God can use me as I am, which is obviously true, absolutely. But I totally discounted any notion that he might have wanted me to go to uni and might have wanted me to have a job. So it wasn't until
00:04:07
Speaker
My nan went into hospital to have a valve replacement in her heart, which is like major surgery.
00:04:14
Speaker
and it went all a bit wrong and she ended up in intensive care for six weeks and we almost lost her and I was visiting the hospital every day and sitting with her and just she was asleep so I just spent my time watching the nurses while I was visiting it and they really amazed me and I thought I wonder if that's something I could do even though I'm so squeamish I wonder if I could get over it
00:04:42
Speaker
And that was the first kind of seed planted. And then as time went on, I began to see nursing as a good bridge. It could be a good bridge to the mission field. And, you know, it'd give me a scale. It could get me into closed countries, possibly in the future.
Challenges of Being Openly Christian in Healthcare
00:04:59
Speaker
And so I pursued that prayerfully and really felt it was the right thing to do. And I mean, I would never rule out
00:05:08
Speaker
overseas mission work. But at the moment, I've no plans to go abroad. So what's happened is what I thought was like a bridge to my mission field has become my mission field. And there may never be another mission field after this, you know, so what was like a secular bridge has become the field.
00:05:27
Speaker
And that was all those years ago. So I've been qualified now for, I think it's about six and a half years. And then obviously I was studying before that for three. So almost a decade in nursing now, which is crazy.
00:05:43
Speaker
I love that story, though, because I think, you know, so often we do tend to think that to like to do mission, we have to, you know, get on the plane and go somewhere exotic. Whereas actually, you know, the fact that, you know, in your case, your mission field God had for you kind of like right under your nose is amazing. I think, you know, health care is so amazing opportunities there.
00:06:04
Speaker
But how does that work out for you in practice then, Georgie? Because I know, you know, on the one hand, you know, it seems I've come across two types of Christians in health care. One, a Christian who seems to keep their heads down and don't like to say anything. And they're sort of afraid about, you know, being outed at work as a Christian. They want to get on with it. And then I also meet lots of Christians who seem to be more like you, actually, who are like, it is an incredible opportunity and so many things I can do. So how does that work out for you? Why are you excited about being a Christian and being in health care?
00:06:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good good description actually and I think I started off as a as a baby nurse when I Qualified as one of those in the first category just wanting to keep my head down and I think we hear so much in the Christian press about you know, healthcare professionals getting into trouble and there's so many horror stories and
00:07:02
Speaker
that it is a fearful thing. And I think I really struggled with that initial transition from student life to qualified life because as a student, I was very involved in CU and so my thinking was that, you know, all of life is a mission field and I could get that as a student. I could really get my head around
Overcoming Fear with CMF's Support
00:07:28
Speaker
that. I was on campus in my lecture theatre
00:07:31
Speaker
to share the gospel and to be ready to have conversations about Jesus. And then something happens to me. I don't know what.
00:07:44
Speaker
in the transition between student qualified where suddenly I just became so afraid and I guess I moved back home so that university environment with the CU friends that I'd had were gone and I just felt like I was on my own and suddenly gone from being quite a bold, courageous, you know Christian to really scared
00:08:09
Speaker
New nurse who I just didn't know how to I mean there are no mission weeks anymore to invite my colleagues to there's no lunch bars that you can invite your friends to so like what do you do and also I don't want to get in trouble when I've only just started and I don't want to lose my job and let's be honest like
00:08:28
Speaker
I think there is a legitimate fear that we may get in trouble professionally. But I would say that my fear and probably the fear of the majority of healthcare professionals is less about professional matters and more just personally, like will I be less popular? I just want to Yeah, I don't want to lose my job. I didn't want to get fired. And I didn't want to end up in the Daily Mail. But also, I want to have friends at work. I don't want to be
00:08:56
Speaker
the outcast. I don't want to be the one that no one talks to because they're a weird Christian and they're going to just keep preaching to us all the time. And so I think that while there is a small chance, I would say, of getting into
00:09:13
Speaker
trouble professionally. By far, we are more silenced by our fear of man and just our fear of what people think of us and not wanting to cause a stir, wanting an easy life.
Expressing Faith at Work through 'Faith Flags'
00:09:25
Speaker
Like you said, Andy, keeping your head down in order to just blend in and make life easy. Let's be honest.
00:09:33
Speaker
Yeah. And so I think what was really helpful for me is doing, this is not a plug, but CMF run a course called the saline solution.
00:09:44
Speaker
and it's a course design. It's for all Christian healthcare professionals. The aim of the course is to equip Christian healthcare professionals to be witnesses for Jesus in the healthcare workplace. So it's very specific and it's unlike any other evangelism courses that you might do in that it's particularly for that context of the healthcare workplace.
00:10:09
Speaker
And it was life-changing for me really because I think I started life as a nurse thinking that in order to be an effective evangelist, I have to go and preach the gospel to every patient or take every patient and every colleague from Genesis to Revelation and give them a full gospel presentation. And I felt unable to do that. I felt it would have been inappropriate
00:10:35
Speaker
not quite the right place, not quite the right time. And yeah, possibly I could have gotten trouble. And so because I didn't feel comfortable doing that, I just became silenced. I was speaking to a nurse in, this was a good few years ago in South Wales, and she found out about CMF and she said to me, oh, this is what we need, isn't it? Because we are gagged, aren't we? We are gagged. And that image has always stayed with me since.
00:11:04
Speaker
that she felt gagged and I totally related to what she was saying so I think as an early career staff nurse I felt silenced, gagged and like I can't say everything
00:11:15
Speaker
I'd like to, but I feel like I can't. And so I'm just going to say nothing at all. And then you go into this, I suppose you go into your shell, you go into your spiritual shell and you just, you just resign yourself to the fact that you're not going to be able to talk about Jesus at work. And that's such a shame. And I think that happens to so many people. It's like a rut we get ourselves in. And it's devastating really, but what the sale and solution course
00:11:41
Speaker
open my eyes to was the fact that just because you're not going to say everything doesn't mean you have to say nothing. You can say something. And there are many things that you can do and say that are totally appropriate, won't get you in any trouble and can be really useful for Jesus. So it was just about taking small steps, saying something. And that gave me a sense of kind of someone ripping the gag off me. And I was unsilenced.
00:12:11
Speaker
It's so good to hear that, Georgie. I think what you've just described is just such a common experience for many of us, particularly going from an environment at university where you've got to see you who, you know, wonderful kind of entity living and speaking for Jesus on campus. But then suddenly you're thrown into your workplace where there are fewer Christians, there aren't organised events, and you just have your way kind of
00:12:38
Speaker
out of your own kind of comfort zone. It sounds like it's really great to hear that your wisdom there is saying, you don't have to say everything, just saying something is really good. What kind of advice would you give to those who are in a similar situation today? What kind of things can you say? What does it look like to kind of be a Christian in that situation where you no longer have the same kind of support and structures helping you to share Jesus?
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, well something, um, this, this is a tool that is super helpful for anyone who's listening. If you work in a healthcare context, but also if you don't, um, there's a term and this is totally borrowed material from the Sane Line Solution course. It's called a faith flag and
00:13:28
Speaker
It's one of the tools, there's eight tools that the course teaches you, and this is my favorite one. And the idea is just like a ship on, no, like a flag on a ship may have the country of its origin, and it's just a way of easily identifying where that ship is from. And so as Christians, we can wave a little faith flag that says, I'm a Christian, and that might be,
00:13:54
Speaker
that might be what did you do at the weekend is so easy isn't it to answer that question by telling people all about what you did on Friday and all about what you did on Saturday and then saying what about you and if we you know take the plunge and
Positive Outcomes of Faith at Work
00:14:08
Speaker
tell them what we did on Sunday as well and say and then on Sunday I went to church that's a faith flag um or even um I went for a walk with someone from my church and I think really like
00:14:21
Speaker
If we are committed Christians, there will be so much of Jesus because he ought to be saturating our lives.
00:14:28
Speaker
So we'll be living in Christian community, we'll be reading, we'll be talking to him, we'll be doing Christian activities. And if our lives are really centered around Jesus, there'll be so many things that we can talk about him. But I think we get this mentality where we have to go undercover and we have to keep all that side of life secret. And so we don't want to tell our colleagues about
00:14:53
Speaker
the Christian community that we're part of. We don't want to tell our colleagues what we've been reading in the Bibles that morning. We haven't forbid we tell our colleagues that we prayed on the way to work and we just feel like we have to keep it all secret and it's so easy to talk about every part of life.
00:15:08
Speaker
apart from that, but really just like our colleagues who are really, our colleague who's really into, I don't know, playing basketball or our colleague who's really obsessed with their dog and is showing like, oh, look what Bertie did this morning and showing you pictures of Bertie the dog or obsessed with their grandkids. Everyone has
00:15:27
Speaker
part of their life outside of work that they're really happy to share. And if we are really living for Jesus, then there'll be so much of him in our lives that we can share. So there'll be loads of faith flags. All you have to do is sit down and think about it. So like, what, yeah, what did you do? The weekend is a good one.
00:15:45
Speaker
I went for a walk with my friend from church on Saturday or, oh, someone from my church has got that car. Or I don't know, I'm just thinking off the top of my head, but someone from my church has. I think once you start feeling that talking about church is forbidden, there are so many ways that you can slip it into conversation very, very naturally and unoffensive, unchallenging. And a favorite one of mine is like looking at where
00:16:15
Speaker
where patients have those labels with their address on and looking at their address and saying, oh, you live in such and such a place. I used to, I've been to a church there, or I don't know the area super well, but the only thing I do know there is, the only time I've ever been there was for a church service this one time. And yeah, just there's loads of ways you can slip it into conversation. It might be something that you wear.
00:16:40
Speaker
It might be like a little Christian badge or a little fish badge. It might be, I mean, if you're a good driver, then you could have a fish on your car. I'm not, so I don't, because I don't want to be a bad customer to me when I'm cutting people off. But it could be something that you wear, it could be something that you say.
00:16:58
Speaker
there are loads and loads of face flags and the thing is that once you've put one up a little flag then everything you do from that point on is a testimony and it's part of your evangelism so it may be that you put up your little face flag and the person
00:17:14
Speaker
as it would, takes the bait. And it's like, oh, church, tell me more. And then you end up having a conversation. But maybe that you say, I went to church on Sunday, and the person says, that's nice, end of conversation. And it never goes any further. But the point is that you've told them, you've outed yourself as a Christian. And they know from that point on, which just makes things so much easier. I think there's a real sense of like, relief when you tell someone that you're a Christian, when you put up that faith flag,
00:17:44
Speaker
and they don't shout at you and they don't pick an argument with you and they don't ask you why does God allow suffering and how can he kill innocent babies and they don't ask you to differentiate them in the night and we should be ready for that of course but there is a real sense of relief when you think okay that person knows now and they still seem like they're okay with me
00:18:02
Speaker
they still want to talk to me. It's like a few moments. So I don't know what we're expecting, probably a lot more hostility than we ought to
Spiritual Conversations with Colleagues
00:18:10
Speaker
be. But the more you do that, the more you like come out and wave your faith flags to people in the workplace, the easier it is to talk about faith.
00:18:19
Speaker
I love that imagery of faith flags, Georgie. You're absolutely right, it gets easier the more you did it. I mean, I look back to my, before I worked in ministry, I worked in the health service for five years, not doing the front-end stuff that you were. I was one of those terrible administrators on the back end. But I remember as a young Christian making the mistake of not waving those faith flags, actually finding, actually, realistically got harder. The longer you went, it didn't get easier. And the moment you put the flag up, it actually got easier, right? Because then you've done it.
00:18:49
Speaker
We're kind of short on time, but you know, you've given us the theory. What about the kind of, what's this look like in practice? Have you got any kind of stories yourself of how that's played out? Perhaps how you know, how you, where the faith flag things that happened as part of that. How's that worked out for you in practice? Because I love the idea. Yeah, I think it just happens over time. Once people know that you're a Christian, they will feel
00:19:31
Speaker
in the world of nursing at 4 a.m something happens where just everybody's deep questions come out and there's been so many occasions sitting at the nurses station at four in the morning on a night shift writing notes and drinking coffee and trying not to fall asleep and a colleague has just asked you the deepest question you can think about you know every the very hard questions for them like
00:19:35
Speaker
way more ready
00:20:01
Speaker
this happened to me and I've never been able to understand why God let that happen or whatever it might be. And just that time in the morning, I don't know why, but all the spiritual questions come to the surface. And so, you know, if I hadn't have previously put up faith flags, because sometimes that's happened. People have asked questions at 4 a.m. who have never have put, you know, when I've been doing faith flags, they've been like seemingly no response whatsoever.
Initiating an Alpha Course for Staff Well-being
00:20:28
Speaker
and then suddenly boom out comes the deep question so someone who you think has no spiritual interest and doesn't want to talk about spiritual things at all will suddenly hit you with something really heavy and it's clear that there is something spiritual going on under the surface.
00:20:43
Speaker
So if you'd never put up a faith flag, they would never have asked you the question. If they didn't know you're a Christian, they wouldn't have asked you. So yeah, even though you put a faith flag up and you don't get a response, it doesn't mean that in a few weeks time, a few months time, a few years time, as you continue in relationship with these people, that suddenly a spiritual conversation may just come out of nowhere. And something exciting in our hospital that's happening at the moment is we're running an alpha course.
00:21:10
Speaker
So this was just, it was during the first wave of the pandemic, there's a group of us that meet in our hospital chapel every month to pray. Just pray for the hospital, pray for each other. And obviously since COVID, we've gone online with those meetings, like everything else, we've been meeting on Zoom. And in one of these Zoom prayer meetings,
00:21:33
Speaker
were praying and I just had this picture in my mind of me and our lead hospital chaplain and we were on the front cover of some kind of like hospital bulletin or e-news and what it was is we'd run an alpha course in the hospital so I we weren't praying
00:21:52
Speaker
along anything to do with those lines. We weren't even particularly praying evangelistically, we were just praying and I rebuked myself because I thought, Georgie, you can't even focus in prayer for 10 minutes without your mind wandering.
00:22:04
Speaker
to see a picture of yourself on the front of a bulletin. Why are you so self-obsessed and can you not just focus in prayer? So I gave myself like a real bit of a slap on the wrist and then tried to focus on the prayer. And at the end of the prayer time, we all said Amen. And another lady in the prayer meeting said,
00:22:23
Speaker
Right. I don't know if this is just me or if this is the Lord, but as we were praying, I just kept thinking maybe we could run an alpha course in the hospital. So I was like, no way. How do I tell them that I've just been
00:22:37
Speaker
spending the prayer time picturing my face on the hospital bulletin so I didn't say that but I said you know guys that's really funny because I had a very similar thought um so we started going into it and actually God has just been it's just been amazing how he's opened the doors our trust have actually allowed us to run this as part of the well-being for staff
00:22:59
Speaker
offering because since Covid there's been a huge emphasis on staff wellbeing and so there's all sorts of counselling offers and which is really really great and as part of that now we're also offering an alpha course so we're about halfway through we've had very small numbers but some incredible questions and some people who are obviously really searching so yeah that's just something exciting that
Closing Remarks
00:23:27
Speaker
has happened in our hospital recently. Oh, Georgie, praise the Lord. What a wonderful story. I love hearing stories like that. I just feel like the hair's on the back of my abs because I neck, but I'm pointing to my arm. Goosebumps, that's the one. Praise the Lord. Thank you so much. It's been such a delight to be able to spend these past 20 minutes or so with you, Georgie. We give thanks to the Lord for the ways in which He's obviously just so evidently at work in you and through you.
00:23:55
Speaker
in your work as a nurse on an intensive care unit. Thank you so much. Andy, thank you too. And we will be back. Thank you listeners for joining us today. We'll be back in a couple of weeks time with our next wonderful guest. But for now, keep it real and we'll see you soon. Bye.