Dr. Nate Calvert: Dentistry is his ministry

How did you become interested in dentistry?

I was thinking about something in the medical field, and when I was at Anderson I started shadowing some dentists, found out I enjoyed it and then solidified that after the first year that this is something I’m going to pursue.

The big draws of dentistry for me were the opportunity to be in front of people all day and to have conversations with them that engage them where they’re at and can turn a regular appointment into maybe a divine appointment from the Lord. That’s not anything special that I’m doing, that’s just trying to listen to what God is saying.

How did you discover Anderson University?

I ended up going on a scholarship interview and got to see All-Access. I got to go to BCM. I got to experience the dorms and campus life. I think what struck me, as a kid who had been in public school his whole life, was how proud Anderson was of integrating faith and academics… You can say whatever you want from a biology class about how we’re going to talk about different theories of creation and evolution and have a conversation about that, and that’s cool for a minute, but what I’m always so impressed with at Anderson is the spiritual climate—that’s what drew me in initially, and that’s what Anderson has that I have not seen replicated anywhere else.

It prepared me for the hard questions that can come along with a professional career in medicine because it gave me a foundation to lay my ethics on rather than what other people are telling me what I should believe.

Chuck Colson once gave a speech at Harvard. He told them “You can’t have ethics without faith in a God that’s outside of you.”

I would agree that professionally you can know the right things to do, but I don’t believe you can fully treat people in a way that is as quality of care—just from the simple fact that I have the Holy Spirit in me now, so it no doubt helps me to love my patients better. That’s not anything special about me, it’s God in us… It is an overflow of an enormous benefit that we have, and the university just absolutely allows for such an engagement in the possibility and idea of faith in a loving God.

Do you feel that your AU education helped you make that transition to dental school?

My classes at Anderson were hard, so I knew what hard work was. I think the biggest thing is that I didn’t have to learn how to study at MUSC because I already had to learn that based on the rigor of classes at Anderson. Because there were so many other things to do at Anderson and because my classes were the way they were—required some work. I knew there were certain things I had to say no to at Anderson, so I was ready to say no to other things at a professional school.

You get on a rat race in these graduate schools… At some point you’ve got to say “this is what I’ve been called to be. This is enough. I don’t care if it’s shiny or not.”

The other great thing (at Anderson) is that Dr. K (Koenigstein) was with me at every step of the way in this whole thing. I was in her office at least once a month just asking her if I was on the right path, am I tracking well enough—just asking her simple things and then… we flesh out like “All right, these are some things they’re going to look for. These are some things they’re going to need.” And she went over every single bit of my application. She was praying for me before my test. She set things up to where I could go and do as I needed to do on interviews.

Everybody at college has an advisor. I was blessed because my advisor, Dr. K, turned into my friend. I had as much help as I needed. I didn’t need to worry because God said I don’t have to worry. But I also didn’t have to worry because it was a village helping me to get into dental school, through dental school, and now outside of it. I think God has created us for community living and finding help and if I don’t know something, then I can go find somebody who knows.

Describe the dental practice where you work.

It’s Pelham Links Dentistry at Greenville. It is full of great people who love our patients well and further the mission of Jesus by the way they work. I am thankful to be a part of the team. We’ve got four doctors. We have a staff of about 30. We see probably 7-8,000 patients a year.

For some, going to the dentist can be scary. What is your approach to bringing peace to your patients?

I rely on humor, direct encouragement and truth-telling. Some people get so wound up and say, “Let’s pray right here that God’s presence is in this room and we can have peace.” I used to put God in a box of like “God can only answer that prayer by this overwhelming peace that comes into the room.”

In some ways God is already answering that prayer if He has made me to be funny, no account of my own, or he has made me be in tune with people who are stressed. By Him saying “go be you in that space,” maybe that’s how the prayer is answered.

The majority of the job is “how do I walk into this room, operate in an operating field the size of my fist with a tongue, two cheeks, a moving patient full of anxiety, and how do I do surgery on this person and still have it matter; have a Kingdom mindset throughout this whole thing, knowing the true win is not when the filling gets done, because anybody that has dental training can do a filling. But instead, how can we love this person from the time they walk in to the time they leave in a way that models Jesus’ ministry of meeting the physical need in order to meet the spiritual need? That’s what God did.

There’s a quote on my bulletin board. It’s Matthew 25:35-36 and it says “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” I have a sticky note to the side of this verse that says “I was hurting and you fixed my tooth.”

In this field, it’s meeting the need and telling them why you’re doing it. This is the blessing. I’d pick this again.

What advice would you give someone interested in dentistry?

I would say, what it takes to be a dentist involves first realizing that dentistry is a job and there are so many more important things in your life than just that job. When we right size a cool job to the point that it’s balanced, then we can appropriately pursue the path of the job because we’re not going to make it more than it needs to be. If you’re still good with that, then find some people that are in the job.

Find dentists and go shadow them. Go find dentists that are who you want to practice like. Ask them how they got there. If you’re in college, it means making good grades, working hard, learning how to sacrifice—the occasional event you may want to go to but you’ve got to study; also sometimes put the studying down and do the thing that’s more important.

If you want to be a dentist, you’ve just got to figure out why you want to be a dentist. If it’s to help people, then there are a whole lot of easier ways to do that. If it’s just to make money, there’s a whole lot more money that can be made somewhere else and it’s easier. If you want to do something impressive, there’s a whole lot of other stages you can get on to do that.

But if you want to do something where you see needs and you see people every single day, and then you get to engage them with some hope, then this is a pretty good way to do that.

I’ve gotten asked a lot growing up, or even at Anderson, “aren’t you going to go into the ministry?” The reality is that I’m in ministry. I’m around people who are not going to church. God sent me on the mission field. This is the mission field. If you’re an evangelist, go be a dentist. If you’re a servant, go be a dentist. If I feel like all I’m around is saved people, go be a dentist. Because my whole day is just around people who have not heard the good news and hope that can be found in Jesus, and that is the joy that I get every single day, if I choose to live in it. I don’t do it perfectly, but if I choose to live in it, of being able to tell people that mission.

I get to go on mission trips a lot. I can pull teeth, so people will let me in the door. But I don’t need to go across the world to help others and tell them about Jesus. They walk into our office every day.

Do you do dentistry on those mission trips?

I’ve been on three mission trips. I’ve been to the Dominican Republic. I’m actually going to go back in October. I’ve been to Ecuador twice. We pack it all in—we take the drills, we take the forceps. We go down there and partner with local churches and support their ministry. We supply the service in a lot of ways. We get to have a lot of evangelical conversations with them, but more than anything we get to be the service that people rally to and then the church that’s there gets to minister and follow up with those people.

I work with an organization called Dental Community Fellowship. DCF. A guy by the name of Bill Sasser is the head of it. He’s taken a bunch of dental students over the years. Those dental students become dentists, and now the dentists take the dental students. It’s not associated with MUSC but it’s MUSC students. I go as a dentist, but I also went as a dental student. The dental students support the dentistry that’s being done. They help but they’re around it. And so the dentists are able to help and serve. It’s just a great thing.

When you’re not doing dentistry, what do you enjoy doing?

I like being with my friends and family. I like watching the Braves. I like running and fishing and hunting. I like laughing.