Small But Significant Beginnings | Legacy Interview with Ted & Patty Hewson

Ted Hewson was officially the first executive director of the fledgling organization known as Christian Community Health Fellowship, or CCHF. CCHF was birthed in southern Mississippi around 1980, but it moved to Philadelphia shortly after its first national conference in 1982. Ted was hired as the first director, but he eventually handed off most of those duties and became part of an early team along with his wife, Patty. Patty had served as a nurse at what eventually became Esperanza Health Center in Philadelphia. David and Libby Caes then took over director responsibilities, organizing conferences and serving as editors of the Health and Development newsletter.

Ted and Patty are a wealth of stories and history from the earliest days of CCHF. They were gracious enough to meet me at Esperanza on a Sunday afternoon last summer, and here's a recording of our visit together. In its early days, CCHF was small, under the radar, and largely unheard of. Conferences drew just 30 or 40 people, and the organization had no budget. It was run by young men and women who were bivocational at best.

But it was a collection of Jesus-loving idealists who believed in the power of the gospel to change not just individuals, but entire systems. More than forty years later, CCHF remains a low-profile community, most at home in neglected neighborhoods, serving under-resourced neighbors. Yet we do it creatively—integrating our faith with our skills and our gifts, and slowly transforming the institution of medicine.

At the time of this interview, there are more than 340 Christian clinics serving vulnerable neighbors with excellence and compassion, anchored in the desire to help people find our true Healer, Jesus Christ. Over 2,000,000 unique individuals are part of this CCHF community. We've grown to where we are today because relationships matter.

I hope you’ll come into relationship with others in the CCHF community—receiving and sharing encouragement, wisdom, and insight—so that we become a movement of medical disciples who faithfully represent Christ and His Kingdom to our patients, in our organizations, and to the broken institution of healthcare in our country.

Thanks for listening. I hope you make it to a CCHF conference soon—I’d love to meet you!

~Written by Steve Noblett

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CCHFTalk is a production of Christian Community Health Fellowship.

CCHF's Mission: The mission of Christian Community Health Fellowship is to encourage, engage and equip Christians to live out the gospel through healthcare among the poor and marginalized.

CCHF's Vision: We envision a movement of God's people who choose daily to promote healing in marginalized communities in the name of Jesus.

To learn more about Christian Community Health Fellowship (CCHF) and how you can get involved please visit our website at CCHF.org. If you see medicine as more than a career choice - as a calling to serve Christ – then these are your people. Yearly we host the CCHF Conference where hundreds of individuals and organizations join together to network, learn, and worship. Visit https://www.cchfconference.org/ for full schedule, details, & to register!

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