Having attended a great many conferences over the years my observation is that the modern church is largely concerned with matters such as leadership, growing the numbers in your congregations, or church planting. There is no doubt at all that these are wonderful and necessary topics to facilitate the building of the Kingdom of God. There is, however, very little focus on healing ministries and as a consequence the doctors are the first port of call for physical problems. For many churches, even large city congregations, if there are mental or emotional issues the people are sent to psychiatrists or Christian counselors trained in secular techniques. In contrast if we look at the Jesus model, His focus was on healing the sick, freeing those with demonic bondages and healing the broken hearted. Apparently, His disciples freely received this ministry from Christ themselves before they were commissioned to take the good news to the World.
Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. NIV
Perhaps we could look at it in this way. Imagine if you were putting together a football team and selecting your players. "Alright, I choose that man over there with one leg, the blind guy, that deaf fellow, the man with one eye, those chaps with the back braces on, and those cripples." Then you launched them out onto the field, yelling with great enthusiasm and encouragement; "Go get them guys!" It doesn't make much sense to me, but many of us have been around churches where the focus is on trying to motivate broken people to live a victorious life of faith. We have all seen the fallout and problems from people with unresolved issues active in a church environment.
Remember the 'Vasa'
There is an old Swedish warship housed in a museum in Stockholm called by the name of 'Vasa.' She was commissioned to be built by the King of Sweden Gustavus Adolphus for use in the war with Poland-Lithuania and was constructed 1626-27. Upon completion she was considered to be one of the most powerful warships in the world at the time. A tremendous amount of resource was put into her, and she presented with rich and ornate decorations. She was loaded with large and powerful guns. Unfortunately, all of the expense and efforts went into her appearance and equipment for war. Not enough time was spent on the design and what was done below the waterline out of sight. The result was that she appeared to be a splendid, dangerous and formidable enemy, when in fact she was unstable in her foundation and not well ballasted. Sadly only 1400 meters into her maiden voyage she encountered a gust of wind which caused the ship to capsize and sink. The guns had just been fired as a grand salute to onlookers as the vessel left Stockholm.
The lesson for us is if we spend all of our time on presentation and how things look, and neglect dealing with the sub surface problems of the church we may not ever even get into battle. If we train people in leadership, and develop or release gifts but don't deal with the unresolved issues in their lives, are we building on sand? We have found that if we focus on the people being set free, the gifts and leadership come with motivation that God is pleased to bless. At times I have ministered to leadership teams of larger churches and have been amazed at what is often going on in the background.
I thoroughly believe that healing the brokenhearted and setting the captives free was the main ministry of Jesus for a very good reason. If we want to be the stable church that God is pleased to anoint, we may need to consider spending a little more time on working below the water line and sorting out the areas that are not always visible.
Steve and his wife Em have spent the majority of their Christian life serving as Senior Pastors in a local Church environment.They have been involved internationally in schools training and ministering in the areas of healing and freedom for over 20 years.They have developed and conducted their 'School of Healing and Freedom' (SOHAF) in various locations in Australia and across the World during that time.In more recent years their ministry abroad has mainly involved teaching and mentoring Pastors and leaders, as well as churches, to be equipped in the area of healing and freedom ministries. Steve is the founder and International Director of Agape Orphanage Network Australia Inc. For information on how to help children in need please go to the website: www.aon.org.auFor information regarding 'School of Healing and Freedom' (SOHAF) go to the website: www.418centre.org The ministry name is based on Luke 4:18.
