Healing and Evangelism - John Woolmer
Two sides of the same coin?
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When I was Rector of Shepton Mallet, in Somerset, the home of Her
Majesty’s oldest prison, a centre of the cider industry
(remember Babycham at one shilling and fourpence a bottle?), and the
closest town to the New Wine and Soul Survivor conferences, the
frequent headline of the local newspaper billboards was ‘Row
in Town Council.’ just once it was ‘Miracle in
Parish church’. Like many churches in the last two decades of
the twentieth century, we were not particularly
‘successful’. We tried to preach the Gospel
faithfully, we prayed for the sick, we exorcised a number of buildings
with due help from the splendid priest whom Bishop Jim Thompson called
the diocesan dealer in spooks. We saw some dramatic conversions and
some gradual transformations. We grew a large number of Readers and
such a surprising number of ordinands that ABM wrote to ask us how we
did it. We did some useful social work, opening a house for the
homeless young and we prayed a lot. However, we never got anywhere near
transforming a community, which, despite being in rural Somerset, was
riddled with all the worst social problems of the age. I
don’t want to sound pessimistic and we were grateful to what
God was (and still is) evidently doing in a small market town.
Overseas Experiences
During this time, with the encouragement of the Bishop and
the PCC. I often travelled to Africa. In Zambia, and Tanzania there
seemed to be many more obvious signs of healing, much need for
deliverance, and many opportunities for evangelism. I found the same
thing more recently in northern Argentina. One diocesan evangelist in
Tanzania said that his problem was too many people professed a
Christian commitment and that he needed follow up material (supplied by
the wisdom of the Vicar of Holy Trinity Leicester and his
congregation).
Despite famine (our cell group couldn’t come because they had
nothing to eat), HIV, lack of work and many diseases such as malaria,
the Anglican church in these countries is, by and large, full of faith,
hope, and love and it is growing. One church in the Masai area of the
Kiteto region of Tanzania has become a hundred in the course of about
twenty years. Of course, it is fatally easy to idealize and there are
plenty of problems not far below the surface.
There are, however, lessons to be learnt from overseas churches, and
these I believe include understanding their view of healing,
deliverance and evangelism. In Africa (after twelve visits) and the
north of Argentina (after one visit), it seems natural to pray for the
sick at every service. If this is not the local church’s
practice, it soon becomes normal. The results are very evident. The
leader of the Mothers’ Union in Kitwe, N Zambia, testifies on
a film, that we made in 1992, that praying for the sick had
revolutionised the Mothers’ Union and made them far more
effective. She also testified to plenty of clear signs of both healing
and deliverance. Very seldom do we know the long-term results of our
prayers but over the years I have had testimonies of people who were
nearly deaf hearing well, people blind in one eye seeing clearly,
cancer disappearing from a small child at a Compassion meeting in
Uganda and arthritic pains from the elderly, a woman raising her arm in
front of her children who had never seen her use it, a paralysed girl
getting out of bed (her mother deeply movingly five years later walked
50km to a meeting to tell me of her death from malaria – not
to complain but to give thanks to God for the quality of life that had
been restored to her daughter) and a paralysed woman in Argentina who
started to move her paralysed leg and unclench her paralysed hand
before our eyes. In the midst of all this there was much evangelism,
the woman whose shoulder was released in front of her children went
back and told her husband. He summoned the local priest to cleanse the
house, to destroy all charms, to help them renounce evil and to turn to
Christ. Last year when the Spirit was moving powerfully in a service in
Babati a man came forward with the fairly normal problem of
‘chest, stomach and knees’. I asked my Tanzanian
colleagues (the local priest and my translator who was a lecturer at a
theological college) to pray for his chest and stomach, while I knelt
down and prayed for his knees. After a brief time of prayer (we had a
seven hour journey ahead of us, and time was limited), I asked him
‘How are you?’ He replied ‘Chest fi ne,
stomach fi ne, knees awful!’ I was a bit puzzled –
then I asked him ‘Are you a committed Christian?’
He shook his head. He then said that he would like to make a public
profession of faith. When he had done this, he smiled and said that his
knees were now fine.
Do such things happen in UK?
I have often seen the same sort of thing happen in England. A
sceptical member of a parish choir seeks healing for his glaucoma.
Despite thinking that it was ‘a load of hogwash’;
God heals his glaucoma (the healing was verifi ed both then and about
seven years later) and he becomes an evangelist. He brings a neighbour,
who is ill with terminal cancer, to church. Although his friend is
never healed, he has six more years of life fi ve ,of reasonable
quality, and he becomes a professing Christian soon after coming to the
fi rst service. I could give many other examples. Perhaps the most
important thing is that the Church believes that there is a Gospel to
be taken into the market place. Non believers get healed (like the son
of a local publican who has terrible eczema and is healed when two of
our prayer team pray for him shortly after the pub has been exorcised
– the body of a condemned highwayman was allegedly buried
under the bar!) and good news spreads. A factory, full of strange
goings on is prayed through, and the owner becomes seriously interested
in the Gospel!
How can we experience more of God’s power and presence?
First, we need to believe that such things are part of
today’s Gospel. There is a prevailing scepticism which is
hard to overcome. Clergy will stand up at public meetings and say
things like ‘Isn’t it time we stopped believing in
all this medieval mumbo-jumbo?’ Our African colleagues roar
with laughter when they hear things like that and say ‘How
can our English brothers be so stupid?’ The Early Church grew
mainly by proclaiming a Gospel which included a proclamation that Jesus
was Lord (and that people needed to respond), that the signs of healing
and deliverance would accompany their preaching and that social
problems should be tackled. Ramsay Macmullen, a professor of history at
Yale writes: The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was
based on miracles, on a head on challenge to non-Christians to a test
of power, and on a contemptuous dismissal of merely rational paths
towards true knowledge of the divine. Without this sort of belief and
expectation, the Church will make little head way in our post-modern
age which is not interested in arguments (important though these are
– see 1 Peter 3:15 for instance) but is always asking
questions like ‘Does it work? Does it make any Perhaps the
most important thing is that the church believes that there is a Gospel
to be taken into the market place.
I believe it will not be because of mega large churches but because
every church and chapel becomes an effective beacon of their light in
their community.
difference?’ Secondly, we need to train people to be
effective in these areas. We need a sound theology. We need a theology
which sees healing as a sign rather than a right, a theology which sees
the need for deliverance as a possibility and not a probability, a
theology which understands something of the mystery of God’s
Sovereignty, a theology which has a positive understanding of death and
illness. We need people who are humble, expectant, teachable and
prayerful. We need people who are full of compassion (the great Jesus
word in healing situations) and who are full of passion to get the
wonderful Gospel out of their emptying pews into the madding crowd in
the market place. Thirdly, we need to pray that healing and evangelism
are not seen as specialist things to be done by great people but are to
be a central part of the every member ministry which should be
normative in church life. We may have occasional healing services
(particularly at diocesan or deanery level – and these should
be ecumenical); but every service in every church or chapel should
offer the possibility of prayer for anyone who has come and their
absent friends. We may have periods of mission (these should be
ecumenical. I am just now involved in one that has drawn together a
free Evangelical church, the local Methodists and the local parish
church), but each of our church services should be so open to the
leading of the Holy Spirit that an outsider could walk in and become a
Christian. I remember this happening in Shepton Mallet when the retired
Bishop of Singapore was preaching. A single-parent mother thought she
had better come to a service because her teenage daughter was shortly
to be baptised and confi rmed – she left the service a
committed disciple. If this country is to turn again to Christ, I
believe it will not be because of mega large churches but because every
church and chapel becomes an effective beacon of their light in their
community. They may sometimes be helped by the large churches acting in
servant mode and helping with church planting and sacrificially
releasing their wealth to help others. Then local newspapers may start
to headline the good news. Instead of ‘Row in Town
Council’ the norm could be ‘Miracle in local
church’.
About John Woolmer
Preb John Woolmer was ordained in 1971, and served on the
staff of St Aldate’s Oxford from 1975-82 and as Rector of
Shepton Mallet from 1982-2002. He now works part time on the staff of
Holy Trinity Leicester running a church plant which meets in schools
and pubs. He is an Associate of ReSource, and travels round the country
providing teaching and training on the healing ministry in churches and
theological colleges. John is the author of a number of books,
including Healing and Deliverance, now recognised as a standard
authority on this subject. He has also written on Prayer and on Angels.
Over the years John has led many healing missions in East Africa and
Argentina. He chaired the Diocesan healing Group in the diocese of Bath
and Wells during his time there, and is currently part of both the
Wholeness and Healing Group and the Deliverance Group in the diocese of
Leicester. He is a Prebendary of Wells Cathedral.
