A Healing Ministry in Your Church

The healing activity -- anointing with oil, laying on of hands and prayer – can be administered in many settings: hospital visitation, home visitation, nursing home visitation, church chapel, church sanctuary and, of course, a formal healing service involving the entire church.  If your church currently has no healing ministry, stepwise incremental progress is recommended.

First, get the approval and support of the pastor and other church leadership.  Without such approval, the healing ministry will always be a fringe activity outside the mainstream and viewed with suspicion.  The pastor, in particular, must offer support from the pulpit even if he is not an active participant in the various healing activities.  Second, create a chapel (if one does not exist), where people can come at specified times and receive the healing activity from designated individuals who are called to this ministry.  Third, at the conclusion of each church service at the time of invitation to come forward and make a confession of faith, the pastor can issue an invitation to come forward for the healing activity, once again administered by designated individuals who are called to this ministry.  The chapel healing ministry and the healing ministry at the conclusion of each service should be offered to the entire community of potential church family and not just to the existing church congregation.  A message of invitation on your church sign would be appropriate.

Once the church has progressed through the chapel healing ministry and the healing ministry at the conclusion of each service, the church can conduct a formal healing service.  A formal healing service involves the entire church and is usually held in the Sanctuary.  The order of events for a formal healing service is flexible.  Here is a sample order.

Healing Service Order

• Introduction 

We gather here responding to the instructions of Jesus to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick.  All sickness, disease and disability were considered forms of satanic oppression; therefore, in freeing people from them Jesus demonstrated the presence of the kingdom of God.  Three elements of healing are mentioned in the New Testament [prayer (James 5:14; Acts 28:8), anointing with oil (James 5:14; Mark 6:13) and laying on of hands (Mark 16:18; Acts 28:8)].  The early church combined these three elements into a single activity with the objective of healing.  We will do the same.

• Prayer

Almighty God, who inspired Your servant Luke the Physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of Your Son: Graciously continue in Your Church the love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of Your Name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

• Hymn

Optional                                 

• Devotional

In Luke 9:1-2; Mark 6:7,12-13 and Mat 10:1,7-8, Jesus said to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick.  This instruction was given to the twelve.  In Luke 10:1, 8-9, 17, Jesus said to heal the sick who are there and tell them the kingdom of God is near you.  This instruction was given to the seventy two.  There is also a common theme about healing found throughout the ministry of Jesus. It begins with the apocalyptic assumption that creation has been seized by a personal, cosmic force and God is now battling this force to rescue His creation.  Jesus understood Himself to be the one in whom this battle was to be played out in a decisive way.  He came to ‘destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8; Heb 2:14) and establish God’s domain on earth.   Every healing by Jesus marked an advance toward establishing the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of Satan.  Consequently, in contrast with any view suggesting that disease somehow serves a divine purpose, Jesus always viewed disease as the work of the enemy.  He consistently treated diseased people as casualties of war.  Furthermore, rather than accepting their circumstances as mysteriously fitting into God’s sovereign plan, Jesus revolted against them as something that God did not will and something that ought to be vanquished by God’s power.  All sickness, disease and disability were considered forms of satanic oppression, and so in freeing people from them Jesus demonstrated the presence of the kingdom of God.  The text in chapters 9 and 10 of Luke and the unique roll of healing in the great war between good and evil seem to suggest that the instruction to heal the sick is just as universal, for each Christian and the church as a whole, as the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

• Scripture Reading

Luke 9:1-2; 10:8-9

• Communion 

Optional

• Healing Activity for Those Not Present

Attendees write healing needs on pew cards for those not present: person’s name together with one or two word description of sickness, disability or injury.

Pass cards to front.

Healing prayer for needs written on pew cards  

• Healing Activity for Those Present

Prayer of repentance, faith and obedience inviting and welcoming the Holy Spirit into the Sanctuary while disinviting Satan and his agents.

Attendees accept their responsibility to become an integral part of this activity.

• Attendees are expected to lift up each person who asks for healing in silent prayer; God knows your thoughts; your silent prayers are just as powerful as audible prayers.

• Where there is real agreement, where the Holy Spirit brings believers into perfect harmony concerning that which they ask of God, where the Holy Spirit lays the same burden on all hearts, in such prayer there is great power.

• The key is “Holy Spirit and Holy Silence;” we seek a service with order and peace where no one is made to feel uncomfortable and the Holy Spirit is allowed to work.

Healing Activity Begins

• Every other pew is left empty so those who lay-on hands can stand behind persons desiring healing prayer; persons desiring prayer need only raise their hand or otherwise make a sign.

• The person’s specific request for healing is told to one of the ministers and summarized for attendees by the minister; for privacy reasons, the request may be for unspoken prayer.

• Friends and family, 2-3 lay persons and the ministers prepare to lay hands on each person.

• The person’s forehead is anointed with oil accompanied by a request that God grant the inward anointing of the Holy Spirit.

• Hands are laid on accompanied by a request that the Healing Hands of God the Father completely enclose every fiber of the person’s being.

• As we prepare for silent prayer, may the love and healing power of God the Son begin the process of healing; may every bodily change from this point onward be in the direction of health, healing, well-being and wholeness.

• Silent Healing Prayer commences and continues for approximately 2 minutes. Attendees are expected to lift up each person who asks for healing in silent prayer during this time.

• The session ends with a short audible closing prayer by a minister.

• The process is repeated for the next person.

• Benediction

Always be aware that the healing activity puts participants on the front lines of spiritual warfare.  It is not meant to be church entertainment. 

Now let’s examine the healing activity itself.  Start each healing activity by placing anointing oil on the tip of your finger and drawing a small cross on the recipient’s forehead. Then begin to pray.  Here is a sample prayer which can be prayed out loud during the healing activity, but, by all means, make up your own!  Be sure to insert the correct pronoun or preferably the person’s name.

Almighty God, as we have learned to do in all things, we come to you now in this moment of healing; we know that only You can change the shadow of affliction into the daybreak of wellbeing.

Help us to wait before You with reverent and submissive hearts. 

As you (name) are outwardly anointed with this oil, may you be inwardly anointed by the peace, mercy and grace, by the love and healing power of the Holy Spirit.

Almighty God, fill him with Your Spirit; uphold him by Your Spirit that he may experience newness of life and serve You in newness of life.

As I lay my hands upon you, may the healing hands of God the Father embrace every fiber of your being.

Almighty God, grant Your healing grace that he may be made whole; free him from this affliction and thereby reveal the presence of the kingdom of God.

As I pray this prayer, may the love and healing power of God the Son begin the process of healing.

Almighty God, may this prayer cause a specific action of God to work in and through the particular network of constraints bringing some outcome into being and bring some succession of events to a different outcome than would otherwise have been; break the shackles of constraint on the potential power of this prayer and heal this child of God.

Almighty God who inspired Your servant Luke the Physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son: Graciously continue in Your Church the love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of Your Name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.