Healing Questions

Last week I drove the 500-mile round trip to Harrogate for the annual New Wine leaders' conference. Gloriously, as an international delegate (it's a very English thing, and being a Welsh vicar, that makes me international) I had been offered total hospitality by New Wine, which I was delighted to accept.

I sometimes love New Wine, and sometimes do not. Their values of charismatic ministry and evangelical emphasis on the Bible are important to me; however it can all feel a bit culturally upper middle class, and that isn't really where I am at.

Bruce Collins is now heading up New Wine Cymru, and I like Bruce a lot. He is gloriously disorganised sometimes, but wonderfully godly, and even when I find myself disagreeing with him, (as when he was heading up New Wine's publishing arm and would'nt publish my book) I still warm to him. He rang me and asked me to go to this conference - and I am thrilled he did - it was outstanding.

The main speaker was Bill Johnson from Redding in California. Of all that he said, two things stood out to me.

First, a challenge on attitudes to healing. So often we focus on what God is not doing, rather than on what he is doing. So - we pray, and somebody is healed, but others are not, and we focus on pastoring those who have received nothing rather than the one who was healed.

Bill questioned this in a way that seems at first offensive - "so we just leave those who are hurting?" is how I was left feeling. How can that be right?

But Bill wants to see a movement away from this pastoring to an ongoing encounter with the work of God as better care of God's people. The movement away from the "why did God not heal?" question, which cannot be answered, and which lies at the heart of such pastoring, to a totally different question - "what do we do next", which can be answered, and which can point to blessing others and to generosity which itself heals when we have been left grieving - this is brilliant pastoring and great theology, and something so obvious I have never seen it before.

A friend of mine put it this way. Her husband died of a brain tumour. She often prays for people to be healed, but never prays for people with brain tumours. Why not? Because if they get healed, she has to ask "Why?" again - why this person and not my husband, and all the old pain returns. If pastoring peopole who get no answer revolves around the "Why" question, this is how we are left.

But now after last week at this conference, she sees that she wants to pray for people with brain tumours. What made the difference? Because she knows she will never understand why her husband died; but if she prays for someone else, they might get healed, and that family will never have to face what she has faced, and that has to be better. If she prays, there is a chance of healing, and that has to be better than no chance for someone else. It is called generosity, it is called love, it is called Christianity.

It is called challenging! And life-changing, and thought-provoking and far from simple, and a real revolution in attitudes. And I found it profound and godly.

So when we pray, we focus on the small answers we do see, and we pray again. And next time we may see more. Or the time after. We may never get the answer we want, but through our prayers someone else might, and that is reason enough to pray - unless we only pray selfishly? Surely the ability to care for others and turn our loss to love for others is itself good pastoral care?

The "why did God not do this for me?" question may need to be visited; but not as a final destination, not as a resting place. It has no real answer, and therefore if we keep it, it will simply keep and consume us. "What next?" can have an answer, and therefore a life beyond it.

Secondly, Bill encouraged us to dream dreams for our churches. If we won't who will? And if we think God will, I guess he will - but he has given us a role to play, so we should play it. So I have been praying for dreams for St Catherine's.

And in my dreams, I see a worshipping community that heals people. Including me.
A worshipping community that refreshes people.
A worshipping community where the poorest are decked out in finery as princes and princesses in God's kingdom.
A place where I get to baptise the children of those who come to faith here. Generations of faith.
A place where we cannot stand for the blessing he will pour upon us.
And though I will be invited out from this place, I will always preach here first what I will take out - the blessing will be first for here, and then for elsewhere.

We had a tunnel of prayer one night, and I prayed in that place for more dreams for my church. I have been dreaming ever since. Lord, grant me more dreams, and more, and more. And make them real.

And thank God for New Wine, and Bruce's invitation.