63. 3 Lessons from Evangelism You Can Apply to Your Medical Practice

Have you ever felt the Holy Spirit nudging you to pray for someone—but you weren't sure what to do?

Wonder what evangelism or healing ministry could actually look like as a physician?

Wish you could integrate your faith more naturally into your everyday clinical practice?

In this episode, I share stories from a recent ministry outreach and evangelism weekend that I hosted in Madison, Wisconsin with my friend, Dr. Alissa Hinkle. What began as a simple gathering for worship, healing prayer, and equipping quickly turned into a powerful reminder that God loves ordinary acts of obedience.

From praying for a homeless man who had just left the hospital to unexpected conversations at the farmers market, I'll share several testimonies along with three practical lessons that every Christian physician can apply—not only in ministry, but also in patient care and everyday life.

Whether you've never prayed for a stranger before or you're longing to grow in hearing God's voice and stepping out in faith, I hope these stories encourage you to take your next small step of obedience.

In this episode, I discuss:

•  Why God often works through simple acts of obedience 
•  A powerful testimony of leading a man to Christ after he was discharged from the hospital 
•  Why both giving and receiving prayer require humility 
•  What Jesus teaches us about praying more than once 
•  Why people are desperate to be heard in today's hurried world 
•  How slowing down can transform both ministry and patient care 
•  Practical ways to begin integrating faith into your everyday medical practice 

Resources Mentioned

• Heal the Healers Physician & Healthcare Conference
  October 30–31, 2026 | Boston, MA
  Healing and Miracles: Bridging Science and Faith
  Register:
  https://healthehealersconference.com/boston2026
•  Join my free Facebook community for Christian physicians. 
•  Looking for a mentor or have questions? Email me:
   inga@ingahofmann.com

Are you a Christian physician or healthcare professional longing for a deeper walk with God and a supportive community that truly gets it?

📍 Mark your calendar: October 30–31, Boston, MA
The Heal the Healers Physician & Healthcare Conference on Healing & Miracles

This is more than a conference—it’s a space to encounter God, be restored, and be equipped to live out your calling in medicine.

This event is for physicians and healthcare professionals!

Early Bird Registration is NOW open until 7/31/26. A limited number of tickets are available. Sign up today. https://healthehealersconference.com/boston2026

Join our growing Facebook Community.It's free and fun.

 
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Transcript

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Today, I'm gonna share about my recent ministry outreach here in the Wisconsin area, as well as ministry equipping and evangelistic outreach with my friend Dr. Alyssa Henkel. And we share some powerful tips and testimonies and three key lessons that I learned on the streets praying for people that you can adapt and apply to your clinical practice Hello there and welcome back, my friends and dear colleagues. I'm excited for today's podcast episode because I'm gonna share a little bit about our recent evangelistic outreach and ministry equipping event that I did just out of my home a couple weeks ago. It was such a good experience and such a good time that I want to share with you what we experienced, some testimonies, but also some key takeaways that we picked up on the road, and how you can apply those lessons to your clinical practice and to your personal life. But before we dive into those fun stories,, I wanna make sure you know that I actually have a free community for Christian physicians like you who want to grow in their faith who want to hear from God more clearly so that they can integrate faith and medicine and just grow in their faith and love for Jesus and step into the calling that the Lord has for them. So if you are that type of person that's "I'm looking for community," please go on the link in the show notes and join my free Facebook community. You will be blessed and encouraged. Also remember October 30, 31st is the Heal the Healers Physician and Healthcare Conference in Boston This conference will be focused on healing and miracles and brings together scholars, theologians, scientists, physicians people in ministry from all walks of life and I want you to be in the room. It's gonna be an amazing time. You're gonna be richly blessed. Nothing like this exists out there. This is not just another Christian conference. Neither is this a medical conference. This is really a very unique gathering for Christian physicians and healthcare professionals that wanna grow in their faith encounter Jesus, and just learn more about healing, miracles, the works of Jesus, and not just learn, but actually get activated and apply those things in their lives. So if you're needing a time to step away for yourself from your busy job and say, "I need to take care of myself. I need to get restored. I need to get refreshed, and I want to be equipped," then this is a place for you. Go to healthehealersconference.com/boston2026 to register. Registration for early bird, meaning $100 discount, is going through the end of the month or until we sell out of that ticket block. So please don't wait because you don't wanna miss out on this opportunity. It's gonna be amazing. Already praying for you. You can find more on the website about the information. But let's dive in about all the wonderful things that we experienced when we did this evangelistic outreach and ministry equipping. And this is something that came about as Alyssa Hinkle, my dear friend ER physician from Tennessee, you've heard her on this podcast, and I-- just the Lord put that on our hearts, and we were like, "We should do something together." And I have to say, Alyssa is a very strong Christian. The Lord is really anointing her and gifting her and stirring her up in evangelistic outreach, and using her medical skills in the ER and outside the hospital on the streets. And she's just praying for people and encouraging people, and I just love her zeal for the Lord, and I wanna share some stories. I'm sure we're gonna have her back on this podcast at some point. Also, she will be in Boston and probably s- share testimonies and stories there at the conference, and we might do a similar equipping that we did here in Wisconsin, right there in the Boston medical area. More on that later, but that's another reason you wanna go to Boston, because it's gonna be a whole lot of fun. So let me just share a little bit the experiences we had when we went and did this event just a couple weeks ago. As mentioned, this was really something we just put together because our hearts were steered towards that. There wasn't a big promotion or a big thing. It was literally a thing I did out of my living room. It was a hybrid between house church ministering to people who just showed up, and then also equipping and encouraging people as we went out on the streets on Saturday to the very famous Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin Farmers Market, which is right around the capital. It's usually a beautiful buzzing of all sorts of people. The farmers, the vendors are out there selling their stuff. There's families, there was tourists, there was all sorts of people from all walks of life, and it was just nice to hang out there. So what we did on Friday, we gathered in my home, and anybody really that wanted to just gather for worship whether they wanted just more of Jesus, whether they want to have equipping for the next day's event to evangelize, or if they wanted even to receive prayer for themselves, which is actually a lot of what we did with a group of people that came. We just encouraged anybody that wanted to be part of this. And it was beautiful because we shared a number of testimonies. Alyssa shared a lot of testimonies. And here is one key point that I wanna make. Sharing testimonies that's why I like to share stories on this podcast too, is really wonderful because it builds our faith, right? It's by the word of the testimony they overcame, it says in Revelation. It's testimonies that build up our faith because you hear a story and you're like, "If God can do it for them, He can do it for me." And when you listen to the stories I'm about to tell you, I want you to really lean into that. The intent is not to say, "Oh, look how wonderful Alyssa and Inga are." No. The intent is to say, "Look what God can do with people, imperfect people when we just yield and take a baby step of faith, and what He can do with that, He can do it for you also. So we gathered on Friday night and it was a beautiful time. We shared a bunch of stories and just how we encountered the Lord, how we encountered the Holy Spirit and His work. We shared stories about how we prayed for people and I shared a little bit about some experiences prophesying over people and leaning into that and learning that and really using that gift and sharpening that skill that the Lord has graciously just dropped into me a couple years ago. Alyssa was sharing a lot of wonderful stories just from the streets and the emergency room and different avenues where she ministers to people, and I just love that. And people were encouraged because we talked about healing, we talked about healing prayer, testimonies related to that, and so people received prayer as well, and it was a beautiful thing. The people that came to be vulnerable and say, "You know what? I want more, and I am yielding to my heart's desire to want more of Jesus and also be open to be prayed for by other people." Because let's face it, sometimes that's really hard for us to receive. And I've been a prayer minister for my local church and for physicians now for a number of years, and I can tell you it's really hard to receive for people especially physicians. We just talked about that in my mentorship group for physicians where we had that conversation. It's really hard for us to receive. So that's one thing. Check your heart. Are you struggling with that? That probably needs to be a whole 'nother podcast. I don't wanna digress, but that was a key takeaway. But we had a beautiful time that Friday night, and on Saturday We went to the farmer's market. There's already a wonderful person from our church who has been faithfully ministering on that farmer's market with just a table where people can stop by and ask questions, where he shares the gospel or just has conversations with people. And I think he has done that for a decade. Can you imagine? That takes a lot of guts and faithfulness and persistence to stand there week after week sometimes in the scorching heat on the farmer's market, probably getting yelled at and laughed at for a whole 10 years. Wow. So I hope this was actually encouraging to him as well that we showed up. So Alyssa and I and a couple other people, we just went around. My husband came along, which was wonderful. One wonderful story I wanna share, and then I'm gonna go in the three kind of lessons that I learned from that. We had prayed in the morning and asked the Lord, highlight a person, highlight something to us that we will encounter. And Alyssa does that pretty routinely. And she had gotten a couple words of things to pay attention to. I had gotten a couple pictures. And so we went off, and we just made it out of the garage on the way to the market, and on the sidewalk, shielded by an old storefront that was not existing anymore, was a homeless person. And we almost walked by, but then felt "No, we need to stop." And he was just asking for help, and we engaged in a conversation. And there's a lot of parts to the story, but it was just so beautiful as we engaged and paused and talked to him, how he opened up, how he shared some of his struggles. He had a very hard life. You can certainly tell that. But he also, he was very knowledgeable in a lot of things. I was so impressed. Tell me the first lesson like, we always say don't judge, and I don't do this kind of ministry at all. I don't have a lot of experience in that. But I have to tell you, I was just so moved by even just talking to this man and hearing his hardships and his story. And the key part was he just got out of the hospital the night before. He still had his wristband on from the emergency room or wherever he was in a local hospital. And he had some leg infection, probably cellulitis or something. Again, we didn't go there for the medical thing. We are going there to minister, to pray, to encourage, and and to spread the gospel. So we prayed for him, for his legs and for healing and and he really softened up and then he talked some more, and you could tell he even, he knew stuff about the Bible, and he started talking about this. And also his hesitations, like his shame and his guilt and his hardships that kind of made him feel distant from God because I think he wanted to believe and he believed, but he had so much shame in his heart from all that happened and a lot of things that happened in his life and a lot of things that he probably did that he didn't mean to. He was just in a rough spot. The Lord filled my heart with so much love and compassion in that moment. It was just amazing, and it was supernatural because naturally, we don't work that kind of compassion and love up towards another person. That's just not our default and it turns out he had gotten a Bible in the emergency room that night before from a nurse or a chaplain or somebody. There's actually several people that signed his Bible, and he showed it to us. He was so excited to show it to us and there were prayers in there for this person and then we got to interact with him just the next day. Long story short, we prayed a bunch. You could feel the weight lifting off his shoulder. And then we basically, we led him through the prayer of salvation and the... He wanted to accept Jesus, but he had a lot of guilt and shame. So we led him right through this, and just the weight off this guy's face, his whole countenance changed, his face changed. He was so much lighter, and it just was such a beautiful thing. And one thing that I took away from that is that you know how often we are not seeing the fruit of what happens when we pour into another person. From his story, Alyssa and I could very clearly tell that over his lifetime, many people had poured into him, whether it was prison ministry or the people in the hospital or other people that surrounded him maybe even other people on the street and the nurse before that we suspect told him about Jesus. Somehow, somebody gave him this Bible. And probably prayed faithfully that something would happen to that person. That the Lord will take care of him and send him another person, because often we release a person and we don't know what happens. And there, less than 24 hours, we get the joy to harvest the fruit of many people's labor and love and towards Christ and towards this person. It was just amazing. And we were just-- That was, of course, the highlight of the day. It was just so beautiful. But here are a few lessons that I learned from this beautiful story that I wanna share because I want you to take note of those because these are the things that you can apply to your own life, whether it's your clinical practice, and apply them to your setting right where you are, or even just the life and the people around us. God will appoint us. He gives us opportunities. The question is, are we often taking them? It really just takes a small step of obedience. And the three points that I wanted to share with you number one, receiving And giving prayer, both of it requires great humility. And I've seen that over the course of that weekend, and of course, this is something I've experienced before, but this was very evident over the course of that ministry weekend. Giving prayer, meaning going and praying for other people, going on the street boldly and going and proclaiming the gospel or even saying to somebody, "Hey, can I pray for you? Can I pray for that illness that you're facing?" What's the worst case that can happen, right? But takes great humility because it is not something we naturally wanna do. I didn't do this event because I'm a super evangelist. I'm like, "I see something on Alyssa. My heart is stirred. I want more of that, and let's combine forces." In part, it's "Let's do it together, and I wanna learn from you, and I'm gonna bring some people along." That was really the heart. And I have to tell you, though, this is a side note. Once you start doing it, you might catch a bug. I will tell you that story another time. But praying for people requires humility because you have to get over yourself over your insecurities, over your pride, over what other people think, over your fears. You have to humble yourself before the Lord and say, "Lord, I cannot do it. You can do it. Nothing good will come out of my mouth, but your words have power." The second part of that first point is receiving prayer takes humility as well, and I've seen that a lot. We... I told about this weekend to very many people, in my church, local physicians. I spread the news far and wide. And I understand people have busy schedules, and they have other plans. But we also saw a lot of resistance because I think people often are resistant because it takes humility to say, "You know what? I haven't figured it all out," or, "I'm really struggling with something." Sometimes these are things that are not easy to share because they're very personal. You might not wanna have other people know that you're struggling with certain things, whether it's, It might... Doesn't even have to be, like, some blatant, horrible sin. It could be just thoughts and struggles and anxiety and mental health stuff and all these kind of things. So it requires humility to say, "You know what? I need Help. I haven't figured it all out, and I'm humble enough to become not only before the Lord..." That's sometimes easy, right? We can hide in our own quiet space, and nobody needs to know. But humbling yourself also in front of another brother or sister or another person or yet a stranger is a completely different ballgame, and requires great humility. So remember that. But the people that Step out into that and say, "I'm gonna humble myself and I'm gonna receive." There is great breakthrough in just that step alone. And I believe the devil often, that's why he keeps us in pride so that we don't step out and humble ourselves and just pretend we have it all figured out. So prayer requires great humility whether you're receiving or praying for somebody and recognize that and I just encourage yourself. Humble yourself before the Lord and also understand that there is this humbling process for the other person on the other side. Just be aware of that. But there's also great breakthrough. Number two sometimes we need to pray repetitively, meaning we repeat or we go after a thing over and over again. So sometimes we believe, "Oh I prayed for it one, one time quick prayer and it should be all set." It's not really how it works. And we see precedent for that in the Bible, right? Jesus prayed for the blind man twice when He could see a little bit and He saw something, a tree is moving and then He prayed again. So we see examples of them of that in scripture. I certainly have seen that in real life. And we've seen that this weekend. Sometimes it's Alyssa, I like how she puts it, it's a dose effect, right? Like in medicine, we don't give one dose of antibiotics to treat an infection. We give a round of antibiotics, meaning multiple doses over multiple days usually, and there is a prolonged effect. And prayer sometimes works the same way. So it could be either go again, and that's a whole teaching and I wanna m- equip more people in how to pray for healing of all sorts. So if that's something you're interested in, please reach out to me. Easiest right now is email or fan mail. I put it in the show notes. But it is important to understand, number one is there a hindrance to the prayer or to the result of the prayer? And number two maybe it's just a dose effect. Maybe we just need to pray a little different see what the origin and the root of the disease or cause of this problem is, or sometimes we just have to go again. That was very evident certainly as we went around praying for people that weekend. Sometimes we just prayed a little bit more. The same with the first gentleman we met on the road the homeless person. We just prayed several times. And you know what? People don't mind. And the third part is people want to be heard. And that was for sure very evident with this gentleman that we led to the Lord. This person just wanted somebody to talk to. This person just needed somebody to have some time and, a-and speak to him. He just wanted to share. He probably doesn't speak to people very much in his lonely. And we live in such a hurried world that is really hard for us. I am a very type A impatient person, so I totally get it. And yet I think it is important that we remember people want to be heard And I found this beautiful verse in Proverbs twenty, verse five. It says, "The purposes of a person's heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out." And what this verse just illustrated for me, there are deep things in a person's heart, in a person's life that only the Lord sees and knows. But sometimes He sends us another person to help draw some of those things out. Maybe there are some things that people just need to verbalize to lift off the weight a little bit. Maybe there's something that just need to be heard for the first time and not ignored or stared at. And that was such a beautiful reminder. Certainly, that was true for the person that we prayed for at first. And the other verse that when I thought about him, this beautiful homeless man, is Job two, thirteen says, "Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was." And it's an illustration sometimes it doesn't need many words. Sometimes it just needs somebody who's taking time. And I know we are often short on that. But to illustrate this last point Towards the end of our tour across the farmers market, we come across a lady that I actually used to buy a lot of stuff from. She makes these beautiful pestos from very interesting ingredients like pine and those kind of things. So I used to buy things from her, and so she remembered me, and we really liked what she made. She made some homemade jams and those kind of things. And I was thinking about her as we were walking around. I wonder if this lady is here. And suddenly, like I, I kid you not, like few steps later, she's right there, and I haven't thought about her in years. And and Alyssa like, "My goodness, that's the lady on my list." Because remember I told you that we asked the Lord to give us some insight who we're gonna meet. Now, Alyssa didn't know anything about this lady, but she immediately had a word of knowledge based on what she prayed that morning. And this lady is very much in some alternative healing new agey stuff. Smudges, burning sage, and all the things I would not recommend because that's not how we clear things. But that's another topic for another day. But we just talked to her, and I actually let Alyssa talk to her because, I don't know her personally, but just to have a complete stranger. And she shared some things with her that I didn't even hear, and the lady was... You could tell she got very tearful under her sunglasses. She kept on wiping her tears away. She was really moved. She was very busy. Usually, people love her little booth and stand that they are and take samples and wanna talk to her. So that she even just was unhurried talking to us was already pretty remarkable because most people don't let you do that because it might take their business away. But she said something at the end. She's "Thank you so much." I think whatever Alyssa shared with her which I know now I won't share publicly on this podcast. But whatever she shared with her I think must have touched her heart, so became very tearful, and she said something profound to underline this last point. And she said, "People don't even-" talk anymore. Everybody is in such a hurry, and nobody pauses to talk anymore." And I thought that was really interesting because I almost felt bad that we took time from her away and, jeopardizing any business transactions. But she could even observe that change in people over the last number of years on the market. And that's a very profound observation that probably isn't surprise, but I think that should give us pause. So again, the three points are receiving or giving prayer requires humility, so remember that when you pray for people or when you feel nudged that you might need some prayer. Repeated prayer can be very powerful because there can be a dose effect. And number three, people just wanna be heard. They just want somebody to spend some time with them. In a world of AI and fast transaction, even more so than a year ago, if you don't notice the speed of time that is kicking up another notch and the incredible impatience we have gathered even over this last few months, I just really urge you to lean into that in your own personal life, that of your patients, and those people around you, because that's gonna be a powerful force against the the time of the age and the age we're living in. So I hope this blessed you. And yeah, take note and practice these things and take them on the road yourself. If you have questions, reach out to me, inga@ingahofmann.com. I put it in the show notes. Don't forget to register for the conference. Again, it is in the show notes, healthehealersconference.com, Boston 2026. Tickets are selling already. People coming from seven different states. You don't wanna miss it. I hope to see you there. And until next week on another Christian Physician podcast. Take care. Talk to you soon.