(RNS) — The first time she retiredIn 2002, longtime missionary surgeon Dr. Rebekah Naylor returned to Texas after 35 years in India to care for her ailing mother.
In addition to doing that, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he taught surgery for eight years. She later became a consultant for Southern Baptist global relief and development work, taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and helped her church start a health clinic in Fort Worth, Texas.
This fall, Naylor, 79, will retire again from his position on the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, where he helped promote medical missions around the world.
Now, for the first time in 50 years, he plans to take a proper break.
Dr. Rebekah Naylor in 2022. (Photo © IMB)
Not bad for someone who never wanted to leave home as a teenager and was overwhelmed when she felt God’s call on her life.
“Even going to college seemed like a mountain to me,” Naylor said in a recent interview, looking back on her career. “So how could I be a medical missionary?”
But once you make up your mind, especially about something you think God wants you to do, almost nothing stands in your way. That combination of faith and tenacity has served him well. After that call to missions, Naylor, the daughter of a Baptist preacher who became a beloved seminary president, graduated from Baylor University and then attended medical school at Vanderbilt, where she was told that women were not welcome in surgery.
But a missionary surgeon in Thailand, whom she met while visiting that country as a medical student, believed in her. While the medical school faculty thought her hopes of becoming a surgeon a lost cause, she said, this missionary did not.
“I was able to help him a lot in the operating room and I found that I loved surgery,” he told Religion News Service. “It was really that experience that made me go back to medical school that fourth year and tell the faculty that I was going to be a surgeon.”
Medical missionary Rebekah Naylor, left, assists in surgery at the Bangalore Baptist Hospital in Bangalore, India, in 1983.
(© IMB file photo, 1983)
After finishing her training, Naylor was assigned to a fledgling hospital in Bangalore, India, which had opened with 40 beds and few staff outside the city limits. Over the years, the hospital expanded to 400 beds, a large staff, and an attached nursing school. Naylor rose from staff physician to medical director to CEO, caring for thousands of patients and delivering scores of babies while serving as the hospital’s sole OB/GYN for years. She also ended up training many of the employees who now run the hospital.
“We grew up together,” he said, referring to his long relationship with the hospital and the people who work there.
Along the way, there were struggles, including conflict with the Indian government and the decision by the SBC International Mission Board to sell the hospital in the late 1980s. The mission board was moving away from running institutions like hospitals. due to the costs involved.
“That was a shock,” he said. “And of course, with great sadness.”
Dr. Rebekah Naylor stands in front of part of the Bangalore Baptist Hospital expansion construction project in Bangalore, India, in 1990. This hospital expansion provided 23 new hospital beds. (© IMB file photo, 1990)
Selling the hospital was difficult, Naylor said, because it was so valuable no one could afford it. Eventually, she helped negotiate a deal with christian medical collegea school founded by missionaries in the early 1990s that educates health professionals.
God made a way for the hospital to continue to grow and prosper, said Naylor, who as a leader had a knack for getting things done and the ability to adapt when things didn’t go as she had planned.
“We were always moving forward,” he said. “I was a planner. But trusting a lot in God to show us what those next steps might be.”
Naylor’s long service and can-do attitude helped inspire other medical professionals to put their training to work for missions, said Rick Dunbar, an emergency room physician and former IMB board chair. Dunbar called Naylor both a friend and one of his heroes. In recent years, he said, the two have worked together to promote the medical work of the mission board. Dunbar said he has been inspired by her focus and dedication to living her faith.
“After discerning God’s will for her, she pursues it with the tenacity of a bulldog,” she said.
Along with that tenacity comes tenderness, he said, and caring for the people he works with. And a desire to help others see how they can live their faith. She described Naylor as magnetic, drawing people to her and inspiring them to join the work.
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Dr. Rebekah Naylor waters a newly planted tree in a hospital courtyard during the Bangalore Baptist Hospital 50th anniversary celebrations in Bangalore, India, in January 2023. (Photo © IMB)
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Dr. Rebekah Naylor waters a newly planted tree in a courtyard of Bangalore Baptist Hospital at a time of celebrations for the hospital in 1998. (© IMB Archive Photo, 1998)
Case in point: In the 1990s, she stepped down as CEO of the hospital and handed that role over to an Indian leader. She then stayed on the staff, serving as its No. 2 leader. The staff took a while to adjust, she said. But when someone asked her a question, she deferred and pointed them to the new CEO. Doing so was essential to the future of the hospital, she said.
“I really wanted the hospital to have a long life,” he said. “And if it was going to have a long life, it had to have strong local leadership.”
Even after returning home in 2002, Naylor remained involved with the hospital, frequently visiting Bangalore Baptist Hospital and the people he loves.
“Bangalore is, even now, a second home, and I have been able to return frequently,” he told Baylor alumni magazine in 2022 when the university honored his service to the church. “It’s the people, the relationships. Bangalore is very important in my life.”
Naylor was recognized during an IMB event at the recent annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, where IMB President Paul Chitwood highlighted her medical service and strategic work in helping Indian pastors start hundreds of churches. .
“Her work and her life speak for themselves,” Chitwood told RNS in an email. “She has been an advocate for the gospel of grace and physical and spiritual healing for the people of South Asia for more than 50 years.”
Dr. Rebekah Naylor speaks to a packed room at a workshop called “Global Impact Through the Healthcare Marketplace” during the Missional Marketplace Summit held at Germantown Baptist Church in Germantown, Tennessee, in March 2014. ( © IMB Archive Photo, 2014)
Naylor said he is hopeful for the future of medical missions. There is still a need for hospitals, he said, but also for clinics and other healthcare options. Health professionals have a wealth of opportunities to teach doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers around the world. And missionaries can also help by providing mental health services.
“This is a huge crisis around the world,” he said, adding that missionaries have long provided care for those who have no other options.
In retirement, Naylor said she hopes to find more time to play the piano, especially the music of Bach, one of her favorite composers. She also looks forward to reading; travel for pleasure, rather than for work; and spend time with her friends. She will also help out at her church, teaching a Bible study and helping to oversee the church’s health clinic.
“I’m not worried about having something to do.”
Dr. Rebekah Naylor rubs her hands before entering the operating room for surgery in 1990 in Bangalore, India. (© IMB file photo, 1990)
