Healing was central to the ministry of Jesus and through the Holy Spirit, God brings healing to people today.
Christian healing can and often does involve physical healing, but it’s far more than physical healing. God can heal emotional hurts. Healing can come through forgiveness, given and received. Healing is not just about a cure that tries to repair or restore something or someone to how they used to be. Healing is about change and development into new ways of being to become the people that God wants us to be, made in His image and likeness.
We may ask God for what we want, but healing and wholeness may come in ways that we do not expect, that can bring deeper joy, peace or change. The way God works is often a mystery! Through encounter with God, people deepen their relationship with God and grow in discipleship.
We may receive healing through prayer, through the touch of another’s hands or anointing with oil. Healing may come through hearing the Word of God in scripture or in preaching, or in receiving bread and wine in communion, or through being listened to and valued…
Healing in the name of Jesus, in his Spirit of love, faith and compassion, can take many forms of which prayer ministry is one.
The Bishop's Adviser for the Ministry of Healing
The Bishop's Adviser for the Ministry of Healing is Christine Holzapfel. Christine is able to point people to a range of different resources for developing provision for healing prayer in services or in the community and for training in prayer ministry. She would be very happy to visit churches or deanery groups, preach and/or lead services with a healing theme, and provide ‘in house’ training. She can be contacted on c.holzapfel15@gmail.com. Read more about Christine here.
Click on this link to find news, resources and initiatives to inspire and inform Christian healing ministry in our churches
You want to set up a healing ministry in your church? - or revitalise a flagging team?
Here’s how you might go about it:
1. Familiarise yourself with the diocesan guidance for prayer and healing ministries, especially the essential safer recruitment and safeguarding considerations and requirements
2. Consider doing a course together
This is perhaps the BEST way, because it pulls you together as a team, and gives you a common source of encouragement and instruction, under your church’s own leadership. We strongly recommend this 5 session course:
Growing a Healing Ministry - produced by Acorn Christian Healing Foundation.
The sessions are well constructed, encourage participation, and cover:
- The healing ministry – what it is, and the church’s mandate to exercise it
- Essential attitudes for a proper expression of the healing ministry
- Appropriate ways to minister healing, and how to care for people when there is no apparent cure
- How the whole church can be a healing community
- How to make concrete plans for furthering the healing ministry in your church.
This resource can be requested by contacting training@cofe-worcester.org.uk or through Christine Holzapfel c.holzapfel15@gmail.com.
3. Introduce a service of healing and wholeness
Several churches in the Diocese have developed services using a variety of resources to suit the particular needs of their churches. Some are in the context of a communion service; some are services of the word. Some offer anointing with oil alongside prayers for healing; some offer imaginative ways of engaging with God using visual aids - the lighting of candles, the use of stones or water, for examples.
Contact Christine Holzapfel, Bishop’s Advisor for Healing c.holzapfel15@gmail.com for examples of these and advice about introducing or developing a service for healing.
4. Be inspired by the reading resources below
(NB Some of these texts cover aspects of deliverance ministry as well, which is outside the remit of the Diocesan Healing Advisory Group; these recommendations are made for the majority content on the healing ministry specifically.)
Key Texts are asterisked *
*A Time to Heal: a Report for the House of Bishops (2000) – and the accompanying Handbook
A very useful text for all who engage in the ministry of healing or wish to do so. Includes the “how to”, and ensuring good practice.
*In Search of Wholeness. Parker, Fraser and Rivers 2000
A Christian theology of healing, and practical training resource for church and medical settings.
*The Christian Healing Ministry. Bishop Morris Maddocks 1981 (+reprints)
Bishop Morris' book is a foundational text and warmly recommended.
*Healing. Francis McNutt 1974 (+reprints)
Again, a foundational text from a well known former Orman Catholic priest; it remains very useful.
*Christian Healing. Mark Pearson 2nd ed 1995
American author, Oxford graduate; has set up a wholistic healing centre in USA subsequent to experiences at Burrswood Christian Hospital and other establishments in UK. This is an excellent practical and comprehensive guide to the healing ministry.
A Touching Place. John Gunstone
A lovely introductory text.
Healing in the Early Church. Andrew Daunton-Fear 2009
It traces the ministry of healing over the first few centuries of the church. A condensation of a doctoral thesis, and fascinating.
The Miracle of Lourdes. Ruth Cranston 1956
Reprinted several times and now available on ‘Kindle’. “Ruth Cranston lived in Lourdes, talked with doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, patients. A Protestant herself, her approach was that of the reporter and impartial investigator. She has verified and documented the facts she presents.”
The Books of Kathryn Kuhlman
First hand accounts by people cured at Kathryn Kuhlman’s meetings in Carnegie Hall in the 1960s with medical records before and after and up to ten years later.
- I Believe in Miracles. K. Kuhlman
- God can do it Again. K. Kuhlman
- Nothing is Impossible with God. K. Kuhlman
We believe in Healing. Ann England 1982
Articles by various individuals – some clergy, some doctors, some lay – who have been involved in the ministry of healing either as ministering or as receiving.
The Healing Light. Agnes Sanford 1949, several reprints
Well written – easy reading – a classic for anyone called to pray for the healing of others.
The Heart of Healing. George Bennett 1979
