This Baylor alumna’s lifetime of service epitomizes ‘Pro Ecclesia’

She’s been called the “Mother Teresa of Bangalore,” and her lifetime of service is the subject of two books — a biography published in 2008, and a children’s book published in 2021.

But before the books, before the recognition, before the lifetime of service, Rebekah Ann Naylor (BA ’67) was a Baylor Bear. She graduated magna cum laude with her bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1967, earning recognition as Baylor’s pre-med student of the year.

“When it came down to it, Baylor was where I needed to be,” she told Baylor Magazine in 2022, when she was honored with Baylor’s Pro Ecclesia Media of Service. “I had excellent professors, and they positively influenced my life. The experience at Baylor increased my self-confidence and the ability to believe that I could move forward and accomplish what I thought God wanted me to do.”

Naylor followed her time at Baylor with a medical degree from Vanderbilt, a surgical program at UT Southwestern Medical School, a 13-week Southern Baptist missions course, and a semester’s worth of study at Southwestern Seminary.

“I was 13 years old when I felt God calling me into medical missions,” she says. “My missional life just came about in steps, as it does for most people. At every stage, God gave me more insight into what he had for me to do. … I have trusted God, and he has definitely directed my paths.”

With her training complete, Dr. Naylor headed across the world to India in 1974, where she spent nearly three decades serving at Bangalore Baptist Hospital. Over the years, she moved from clinical surgeon to chief of medical staff and medical superintendent. Under her leadership, the hospital doubled in size, from 80 to 160 beds.

Naylor also supervised the construction of a nursing school in Bangalore (now Bengaluru) to train future healthcare staff. It opened in 1996, and was fittingly named the Rebekah Ann Naylor School of Nursing in her honor. (She would also serve as a professor of anatomy and physiology at the school, staying to see its first class graduate in 1999.)

And that’s not all. Naylor spent a decade as a strategy coordinator and church planter for the International Mission Board in India, helping plant 900 churches in the state of Karnataka. And when she finally returned to the U.S. in 2002 (to help care for her aging mother), she joined the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, served as a global healthcare consultant for Baptist Global Response, and helped found a free medical clinic in Fort Worth. She now serves as senior distinguished professor of missions and missionary-in-residence at Southwestern Seminary.

Almost 30 years in India, and another 20+ here in the U.S. — all spent serving those in need, spreading the Gospel, and teaching. What an incredible life of service.

Looking back, she says, she “knew the main purpose [of being a missionary] was telling people about Jesus… It seemed to me you did that no matter what your profession was. Medicine was just what God told me to do.”

Sic ’em, Dr. Naylor!