Have United Methodists lost their healing touch? Proponents want to recover the church’s ministry of healing through prayer, anointing and the laying on of hands.
By Mary Jacobs Staff Writer
Jesus healed the sick. His disciples healed people in Jesus’ name. And John Wesley called on believers to tap into the gifts of the spirit, including healing.
But many proponents say that “healing” isn’t happening often enough in United Methodist churches today.
While most congregations offer prayers for the sick, few regularly ask for divine healing, anoint the sick with oil, or practice the laying on of hands. Talk of “miraculous healings” is relegated instead to televangelists or members of Pentecostal or charismatic churches.
Some United Methodists believe that’s a mistake.
“I think we’ve lost touch with the ministry of healing prayer,” says Linda Romine, a member of First UMC in Sheffield, Ala.
Methodists tend to take a “works approach” instead of depending on faith alone for healing, says the Rev. Don Crary, a retired UM pastor.
“Healing is something we might enable people to receive through good medical care, but we’re not focused on divine healing,” he said. “We’re like most of the other mainline denominations. We’re faithful about preaching the gospel but not acting on the divine healing that would confirm the gospel.”
Seeing that “gap,” Mr. Crary joined an ecumenical organization called the International Order of St. Luke the Physician (OSL). OSL seeks to bring Jesus’ healing ministry back into mainline churches.
“We want to make Jesus’ ministry of healing available to all people,” says the Rev. Larry Mitchell, OSL’s North American director. “Our mission is to help all Christian churches become aware of what we believe to be... [part of] the central message of the gospel for the church.”
There are about 6,000 members of OSL in the U.S. and Canada. Local chapters welcome people from any Christian denomination who share an interest in healing prayer. The organization doesn’t track the denominational affiliations of its members, but two of its eight regional directors are retired United Methodist pastors.
Members complete a study of the healing miracles of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament. Most chapters hold weekly or monthly healing services as well as regular meetings with prayers, anointing and laying on of hands. The services are generally open to anyone who desires healing.
(The Order of St. Luke the Physician is not related to the Order of Saint Luke, a religious order with Methodist origins that is dedicated to sacramental and liturgical education and practice.)
Jeanne Buck, a member of Cookeville UMC in Cookeville, Tenn., joined the Order of Saint Luke after seeing the difference it made in her sister, Betsy Scott. After she was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in 2003, Ms. Scott sought healing prayers from members of the organization’s local chapter in conjunction with her medical regimen of chemo and radiation.
“I could immediately tell the difference in her attitude,” says Ms. Buck. “She was getting above the cancer and focusing more on Christ.” So when Ms. Buck learned that she had breast cancer in 2004, she called her sister and said, “I know what prayer has done for you. I want that, too.”
In a special service at Hixson UMC in Hixson, Tenn., members of the healing ministry laid hands on Ms. Buck, prayed for her and anointed her with oil. Three days later, she had surgery to remove the lump in her breast. Doctors were surprised when the pathology report revealed that Ms. Buck actually had a more curable form of breast cancer than originally diagnosed in her initial biopsy.
“I immediately knew: ‘This is my healing,’” Ms. Buck recalls.
Stories like hers, Ms. Buck adds, “don’t occur in Methodist churches that much” because churches don’t emphasize the power of healing prayer.
Why? Skepticism toward the miraculous became “a significant and influential stream” within Methodist tradition in the late 19th century, says William Abraham, a professor at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology.
“Groups such as the Order of St. Luke represent ‘a skepticism toward the skeptics,’” Dr. Abraham said. “I would see this as one more renewal movement within the church. It’s a way of saying, ‘We shouldn’t lose our nerve here.’ So it’s a corrective that’s coming from the rank-and-file members, to renew an element of the ministry of Jesus.”
Donna Strieb, associate pastor of Alamo Heights UMC in San Antonio and a member of OSL, believes that fear keeps many Methodists from attempting a healing ministry.
“When we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, we never know how the Holy Spirit is going to move in our lives,” says Ms. Strieb. “We relinquish control. That is a hard thing to do.”
She says most modern Methodists put their faith in doctors and conventional medicine. OSL members see medicine “as an important part of the way God heals” and seek to work in tandem with the medical profession, she says.
But there’s another reason some people of faith are wary of healing ministry.
“Many people have a fear that, if they come for prayer and ask for healing, and it doesn’t come, then does God really love them?” Ms. Strieb said.
OSL doesn’t pose any theories as to why some people receive physical cures and others don’t.
“That is a mystery,” Mr. Mitchell says. “We don’t understand why some are healed and some aren’t. But I do know only one thing: We are called to pray for the sick. What happens, the result, is not our concern. It’s God’s concern. That makes it a lot easier to do this.”
OSL members also say that healing can take place with emotional or spiritual wounds, even when physical ailments aren’t cured. Mr. Crary, who is vice president of OSL’s North American board of directors, believes prayer helps in ways that psychotherapy, for instance, may not.
“Therapy helps people vent, but it doesn’t bring any closure,” he says. “When we take a person to the presence of Jesus, that person can choose to forgive and to ask God to forgive them for carrying a grudge. It’s an incredible relief. It’s the whole matter of taking things to God.”
Taylor Burton-Edwards, director of worship resources for the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship, says there’s a growing interest in healing within the United Methodist Church.
The Book of Worship includes two rituals for healing services, he says, yet “we continue to get requests for more resources for healing services and healing prayers to be included in future hymnals or worship materials.”
One source of renewed interest, he says, may be the increased attention given by the medical and scientific community to the connections among mind, body and spirit. In his experience, younger adults seem to be more open to healing ministries than those of the Baby Boomer generation.
Joan Peterson, a member of the United Methodist Church of Geneva, Ill., joined OSL after attending a healing service. She sees OSL as a way of helping churches stay focused on healing ministry.
“I think the UMC has always believed that prayers were answered and that Jesus will heal through our prayers,” she says, “but nobody ever thought of doing it on a regular basis.”
San Antonio’s Alamo Heights UMC offers prayer for healing during its regular weekly worship services. Once a month, the church hosts a full healing service with liturgy that is open to anyone who desires to participate. The church also hosts a weekend conference on healing each year.
Healing ministry has made a big difference in the church, Ms. Strieb says.
“It has opened us to the movement of the Holy Spirit in a way that we had never experienced before, through the power of Jesus Christ, the master physician,” she said. “It really fits into who we are called to be, and who Wesley called us to be.”
© 2007 DESIGN PICS
OSL doesn’t pose any theories as to why some people receive physical cures and others don’t. 
