24.10.2014
Healing Ministry Should be at the Centre of Church Life – Synods Hear
The curious case of the missing ministry was highlighted by the Dublin and Glendalough Chaplain to the Church’s Ministry of Healing, the Revd Bruce Hayes (Dalkey) at Diocesan Synod this week.
Proposing the report of the Diocesan Committee of the Church’s Ministry of Healing, Mr Hayes confessed to being a fan of Nordic detective fiction and wondered what Jo Nesbo’s character, Harry Hole or Henning Mankel’s detective, Kurt Wallander, would make of the mysterious disappearance of the church’s healing ministry.
He pointed out that the Gospels contained the imperative that every follower of Christ was to heal the sick and healing occupied a central place in the early church.
Today, he said, there were weekly healing services in St Ann’s and Christ Church Cathedral and new intercessors were being trained and commissioned. However, he felt one had to be on the inside to be aware of the ministry.
The challenge was to bring the Church’s Ministry of Healing back to the mainstream to be seen as a normal part of the faith journey, he said. The expectation of miracles may have caused part of the problem stressing that healing happened more often in a quieter way.
“We need to be careful to avoid overvaluing the marvelous and the miraculous at the expense of the ordinary, and we need to make sure we use all the gifts of healing at our disposal. These may not be the special, the remarkable or the miraculous, but they are a gift of love. What a difference we would make to God’s world if, instead of seeking after the extraordinary, we concentrated on doing the ordinary extraordinarily well,” Mr Hayes stated.
There were just two requirements in any healing ministry, he said: openness to God and a deep concern for our neighbour. “So I suppose the crime hasn’t been successful, the CMH still exists, one only needs to know where to look, but I do think now the time has come for us to discover a way to stand up and say we are as relevant today as we’ve ever been,” he concluded. (Read the Revd Bruce Hayes’s speech by clicking here)
Canon William Deverell (Tallaght) observed that many new churches had healing as part of their services and that he now offered an opportunity for prayer at the end of services.
Susan Dawson (Christ Church Cathedral Group) expressed concerns on hospital chaplaincy. As a Lay Chaplain employed by the Presbyterian Church she said that chaplaincy was a ministry on the edge but it had the potential to be a bridge between the secular and faith worlds. But she said it was time to evaluate how the service was being delivered.
Canon David Moynan (Kilternan) told Synods of the working group on hospital chaplaincy that had been established by the Archbishop.
Avril Gillatt (Narraghmore and Timolin with Castledermot and Kinneagh) encouraged parishes to establish healer prayer groups to give support to parishioners going through difficult times. She also appealed for people to join the rota for the services in St Ann’s on Tuesdays and Christ Church Cathedral on Thursdays.
Inez Cooper (Leixlip and Lucan) and Thea Boyle (Blessington) spoke of their experience of lack of chaplains.
Photo: Jessica Stone, coordinator of Church’s Ministry of Healing, Ireland.