Reclaiming the Healing Ministry of the Church

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Reclaiming the Healing Ministry of the Church

• Dwight Judy
• Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary

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Permission to engage in healing prayer

• Dream of Rev. Randall Hansen, D.Min.
• Ex opere operatum
• Cultural differences recovery or continuity of
  healing/interecessory prayers

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Themes

• Climate of Hospitality to Religious Experience
• Recovering the Soul
• A Climate of Prayerfulness
• Prayer Research Challenges
• Prayer Healing Ministries
• Liturgy of Anointing Healing

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Climate of Hospitality to Religious Experience

• Revival of interest from Christian practice in
  spiritual practices, liturgies of healing
  anointing, prayer
• Approaches to mind-body medicine
• Sharing of experiences of the dying
• Biblical scholarship

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Jesus Healing Ministry

• Psychological Healing
• Physical Healing
• Healing at a distance
• Mind-body (psychosomatic) healing
• Spiritual Healing
• Invited and uninvited healing

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Recovering the Soul

• We are seeking to bring back the symbolic power
  of the idea of the soul, to recover it as a guide
  to the search for ourselves, our lost selves. (p.
  189) We must rediscover the intermediate
  human, who alone in the cosmic scheme can care
  for, or harmonize, or relate all the Forces of
  creation. (p. 181)
• Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity, Doubleday,
  1980

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Intermediate Human Imago Dei

• Beneath you and external to you lies the entire
  created universe. Yes, even the sun, the moon,
  and the stars. They are fixed above you, splendid
  in the firmament, yet they cannot compare to your
  exalted dignity as a human being.
• The angels and the souls of the just are superior
  to you inasmuch as they are confirmed in grace
  and glorious with every virtue, but they are your
  equals in nature as intelligent creatures. By
  nature you are gifted with three marvelous
  spiritual faculties, Mind, Reason, and Will, and
  two secondary faculties, Imagination and Feeling.
  There is nothing above you in nature except God .
  . . .

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Intermediate Human Imago Dei

• When you are reading books about the interior
  life and come across any references to yourself,
  understand it to mean your whole self as a human
  being of spiritual dignity and not merely your
  physical body. As a person you are related to
  everything in creation through the medium of your
  faculties.
• If you understand all this about the hierarchy of
  creation and your own nature and place in it, you
  will have some criteria for evaluating the
  importance of each of your relationships.
• Wm Johnston, The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book
  of Privy Counseling.
• Doubleday, 1973 (p. 129)

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United Methodist Book of WorshipHealing
Services Prayers

• Sozo/salvation/wholeness
• Spiritual healing is Gods work of offering
  persons balance, harmony, and wholeness of body,
  mind, spirit, and relationships through
  confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

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Medical Eras

• ERA I mechanical, material or physical medicine
• ERA II mind-body medicine
• ERA III Nonlocal or transpersonal medicine
  (natural province of intercessory prayer
  practice)
• Larry Dossey, Healing Words, The Power of Prayer
  and the Practice of
• Medicine. HarperSanFrancisco, 1993 (40-41)

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Confusions Possibilities illuminated by medical
eras

• Tendency to treat intercessory prayer as ERA I
  intervention mechanistically rather than
  entering the mystery of ERA III intervention
• All prayerful personal reflection promotes
  mind-body health as ERA II intervention

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Prayer Prayerfulness

• Prayer tends to follow instructions
  prayerfulness does not
• Prayerfulnessis accepting without being passive,
  is grateful without giving up.
• It is more willing to stand in the mystery, to
  tolerate ambiguity and the unknown.
• (Dossey, p. 24)

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Prayer Prayerfulness

• Prayerfulnessnot the world-manipulating,
  disease-bashing forms of prayer to which most
  Westerners resort when sickpermeates many cases
  of profound illness that improve spontaneously.
  Prayerfulness allows us to reach a plane of
  experience where illness can be experienced as a
  natural part of life, and where its acceptance
  transcends passivity. If the disease disappears,
  we are grateful if it remains, that too is
  reason for gratitude.
• (Dossey, p. 27)

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Prayer Prayerfulness

• Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it
  is in heaven
• Give us this day our daily bread
• Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who
  have trespassed against us
• For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
  for ever!

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Philippians 44-7

• Farewell I wish you all joy in the Lord.
• I will say it again all joy be yours.
• Let your generosity be manifest to all.
• The Lord is near have no anxiety,
• but in everything make your requests known to God
• in prayer and petition with thanksgiving.
• Then the peace of God,
• which is beyond our utmost understanding,
• will keep guard over your hearts and your
  thoughts,
• in Christ Jesus.

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Go and do likewise

• Peter and John Acts 3
• Early church Acts 243 A sense of awe was
  everywhere, and many marvels and signs were
  brought about through the apostles
• Peters shadow provides healing Acts 515
• James 413ff prayers for anointing and healing
• Example of the Good Samaritan (anointing with
  wine and oil use of medicine of the time)

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Renewing Intercessory Prayer Ministries

• Gathering of ministry teams for conversation and
  education about prayer
• Commissioning of prayer teams
• Training and utilization of lay persons for
  serving at healing prayer stations
• Inviting home-bound to pray regularly for the
  church, individuals and ministries
• A dream for the whole church healing occasions
  for all ex opere operatum

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Prayers Anointing in Worship

• Regular use of Ritual for Healing Anointing
• Altar prayer in service Lowell Black,
  First United Methodist Church,
  Valparaiso, Indiana
• Designated prayer stations during Holy Communion
• Special occasions/community outreach darkest
  night service, cancer support
• A dream for the whole church healing occasions
  for all ex opere operatum