I grew up in a remote northern location, so my family worshipped ?wherever the Word was preached.' As a result, I experienced an eclectic variety of worship styles and practices. When I joined an Alliance church, I felt immediately at home. A good part of that ?coming home' feeling was the emphasis on the Fourfold Gospel?Jesus as Saviour, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King.
As a registered nurse, I had grown increasingly aware of how significant holistic ministry is. The inclusion of Jesus as Healer as part of the gospel message was particularly compelling to me personally.
At Assembly 2010 in Turkey, one of our keynote speakers, Steve Kerr, the pastor at Gateway Church in Caledonia, ON noted the need for three things: a theology, a method and a practice of healing. Pastor Kerr reminded us that while we have a theology of healing, we also have models and a practice of healing. It was an excellent, moving time of healing worship followed by a service of Communion and anointing with oil.
This type of service is often replicated throughout the Alliance family of churches. In addition to those times, special healing services may be conducted at the time when a healing ministry is introduced to the church or when a parish nurse is commissioned.
Indeed, one role of a parish nurse is to keep the focus of the church on health and healing, because it is a perspective that is easily lost in the other missions and messages of the Fourfold Gospel. Healing worship services often produce many stories of how God has moved in healing body, mind and spirit.
However, many of our Alliance churches, pastors and congregations still struggle with the theology of Christ as Healer and with how to best implement Christ's call to healing ministry.
So we settle for a once-a-month-when-we-remember, short time of prayer at the end of the Communion service. A.W. Tozer once said, "Worship is the missing jewel in the Christian Church."
Perhaps, if I could be so bold as to paraphrase Tozer, I would say that healing worship is the missing jewel.
Time for healing
Healing worship is not an add-on at the end of a Communion service. It is taking the time to come into the presence of Jesus, our Healer. Yes, we need the theology, the models and the practice, but more than that, we need the presence?the presence of our living, loving, healing Jesus.
We experienced that in Turkey. Having been reminded of the theology, models and practice of healing, the gathered congregation spent time in communion and then time in prayer for healing.
Time is perhaps one of the keys to healing worship. One Sunday, several years ago, Billy Shisko, a dear woman in her eighties said to me "I think the reason we sing a worship chorus several times is that it takes that long for the meaning to get from our heads to our hearts!"
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Evans, Abigail Rian. Healing Liturgies for the Seasons of Life. Westminster John Knox Press 2004 |
We live in a time when we have many obligations, distractions, and demands. It is hard to let go of all that is pulling at us and to come into the presence of Christ. Like the woman who had to reach Jesus though the crowd just to touch the hem of his garment. It took persistence, courage, and time on her part. So too, it demands persistence, courage, and time to push through the crowd of our own distractions to touch Jesus. But he is waiting for us to touch him so that he may turn and, with compassion, look on us and say to us, "be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace" (Luke 8:48 NKJV).
The peace of Christ and the shalom of God encompasses wholeness and well-being in body, mind
and spirit. It is a peace that surpasses all understanding. It is a peace that resides deep within disregarding external circumstances. It is a peace that begins in our spirit and wells up through our soul (our mind, will and emotions). It is a peace that abides in faith, hope and love.
Mystery of healing
At the same time, we acknowledge that we live in a broken world, a world of disease and death. Sometimes we succumb. Thus, healing, whether of body, mind or spirit, has always some element of mystery. We do not know the why, when, where or how of God's answer to our cry for healing. But we are called to come alongside and proclaim the good news of the full gospel of the salvation that Christ has wrought for us by his death and resurrection.
We have been saved from our sins, saved from ourselves, saved from our sicknesses, and saved for a secure future. That is why the Lord's Supper or Communion has such power and mystery. It is a time spent in the presence of God, recalling that Jesus is our Saviour, our Sanctifier, our Healer and our Coming King.
As we spend time in the presence of Jesus, are obedient to his Word, and ask the elders of the church to pray over us and anoint us with oil, we find that the peace that abides in faith, hope and love rises up. It not only rises through our spirit and our soul.
Sometimes it rises up to touch our bodies. Sometimes it brings strength and courage to walk a difficult journey through disease and pain until we see our King face-to-face in eternity. And sometimes, in mystery, we find healing of body or mind or perhaps a pathway to healing.
Community for healing
The Scriptures also call us to community. We are part of the body of Christ. We have been blessed with gifts of God. We recognize that Christ is in all and through all and all things move and have their being in him. Our bodies were created, by God, to heal. People who have the skills, training, knowledge and/or gifts of healing may well speak, by the spirit of the healing Christ, the words and a pathway to health. If we are good stewards of the body God gave us, then proper diet, medications, therapies, or herbs may all provide healing.
But if Christ is in all and through all, then it seems to be appropriate to think of all these models, methods and means as our Saviour's gracious provision for the healing of both our body and soul. To God alone be the glory.
Divine healing is not only the instantaneous or ?miraculous.' It is the work that God has called us all to participate in. Just as Jesus sent his disciples out to imitate their master in teaching, preaching and healing.
And just as he promises that whoever believes in him will do the works he does ?and greater,' we find that inherent in these Scriptures is the promise that these are the signs that follow those who believe. So we should not consider healing and other such works out of the ordinary, but simply the works of those who follow in the footsteps of their Master.
Simply put, our part is to trust in God for ourselves, and for those who may not yet be able to trust him. Our part is also to do those simple, necessary things that help to answer the prayers we make. If we pray for bread for the poor, it is also for us to share the bread on our table. If we pray for a healing for cancer, it is also for us to tend to our way of living and to support the healers among us.
As you seek to bring healing worship to your community of faith, remember that we were, originally, an Alliance of believers from a number of denominational backgrounds.
My eclectic background in faith has confirmed that we can again, like Isaac, "re-dig the wells of our forefathers and call them by the names which our fathers have called them."
There are many resources and models for healing worship within both evangelical and mainline traditions. Let us listen for the leading of the Spirit and follow Jesus, our Healer.
Ruth Ann Fraser is the National Coordinator of Alliance Parish Nurse Ministries
