2023 Meeting

After a several year hiatus, the Christian Surgeons Fellowship was thrilled to resume its meetings in conjunction with the 2023 board meeting of the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons. The time included hearing from Marvin Olasky about his recent book, Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness as well as the unparalleled joy of fellowship with other surgeons who follow Jesus. 

2018 Meeting

At our 2018 meeting, the need for increased surgical care in low and middle income countries and the response of surgeons who follow Christ was discussed by Dr. Russ White (Tenwek Hospital) and Dr. Keir and Joanna Thelander (PAACS).  There was a focus on how surgeons in the US can be missional through short-term trips and through faithfulness in their day to day lives.  Listen to those talks below to learn more.

Check out the talks from the weekend here:

Meet our 2018 speakers

Dr. Russell White

Dr. Russ White was born in the Belgian Congo to medical missionary parents. He attended Roberts Wesleyan College, the University of Michigan School of Medicine, and the Harvard University School of Public Health. He completed a general surgical residency at Brown University and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, England.

Dr. White has served as the chief of surgery at Tenwek Mission Hospital in Kenya since 1997, where he spends the majority of his time. His is a clinical professor of surgery at Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He has also been the program director of the Tenwek Hospital General Surgery Residency program since 2007. In this capacity, he works with other consultant surgeons at Tenwek Hospital to train ten surgical residents in a fully approved 5-year general surgical residency. He is also the deputy chairman for the division of examinations and credentialing for the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa, responsible for examination and certification of surgeons in eleven different countries in the region.

​He received the American College of Surgeons Humanitarian Surgeon of the Year award in 2012, and was awarded the L’Chaim Prize for medical missions in 2017. His passion is for teaching and mentoring young surgeons. He has special interests in cancer of the esophagus and rheumatic heart disease, and has published extensively in these areas.

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Dr. Keir Thelander

Keir Thelander was born in Chicago, IL. Growing up in Indianapolis, IN, Keir always planned to become an engineer and so attended Purdue University. During his studies, God redirected him to a different career with more opportunity to interact with people and thus he started preparing for attending medical school. After finishing Purdue University as an electrical engineer in 1995, he began medical school at Indiana University, intending to be a Pediatric Cardiologist.

After his first year of medical school, Keir married his wife, Joanna. With his first exposure to surgery during his third year clinical rotations, Keir fell in love with surgery. Joanna and Keir started his residency in 1999 at Fairview Hospital, Cleveland, OH. During this time, Keir was heavily involved with his church, Grace Church in Middleburg Heights, OH, and became active in CMDA as part of the advisory committee for Northeast Ohio.

Towards the end of residency, after much prayer, it became clear that God was calling Keir to a career in medicine, teaching, and discipleship, but the question was how to combine all of those and where to do so. One evening while taking call at the hospital, Keir received a page from Joanna. She said….”How would you like to go to Africa?” Joanna explained to a startled Keir that an email had been sent out through CMDA asking for a surgeon interested in teaching and passionate about discipling. Over the next few months of correspondence with Dave Thompson, the opportunity to serve for 1 year closed, but God opened the door to serve more long term. In 2006, Joanna and Keir with their two young children moved to Albertville, France for language training. They then moved to Gabon in August of 2006 to begin training and discipling Christian African doctors to become surgeons alongside of Thompson.

In 2008, Keir was named Program Director of Bongolo Hospital’s PAACS program and also became the PAACS Regional Director for West/Central Africa which includes Bongolo Hospital, Mbingo Baptist Hospital (Cameroon), and Galmi Hospital (Niger). In 2016, Keir was selected to become the new Chief Medical Officer of PAACS and in July, 2016 he began that work.
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Keir was married to Joanna in 1996 and has two school-age children.

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