The Church

Healing Traumatized Churches

By Ronald H. Wean “Through the characters of his play, Ron creatively invites us into the discussion and dialog so that our individual and community God-given healing may continue. How refreshing it is!”—Rev. Larry R. Welin, D.Min., LPCC, CEAP “I began reading “Healing Traumatized Churches” critically. However, I quickly was drawn in to the book’s message of hope and restoration. It should be no surprise that dominant culture...

How to Lead in Church Conflict: Healing Ungrieved Loss

By K. Brynolf Lyon & Dan P. Moseley The hurts of people often spill over into the life of the congregation causing conflict.The hurts of people often spill over into the life of the congregation causing conflict. Your chair of finance is going through a nasty divorce and is mad at God. The mother of one of your Sunday School teachers is chronically ill. A major factory in your community has relocated, taking with it many of your...

Can These Bones Live Again? Healing the Wounded Church

By Don Shackelford   God is asking His church to see the wounded soldiers of the cross through His eyes and asking the ever-important question to those engaged in this battle called life: “In your opinion, can the fallen church members ever be used by Me in the pulpits and ministry again?” We are being challenged by the Most High God to restore the fallen soldiers of the cross in the spirit of meekness, considering themselves also...

The Healing Church: Practical Programs for Health Ministries

By Abigail Rian Evans What role can churches and religious organizations play in health care today? Abigail Rian Evans answers this question and others in this valuable guide to practical programs for health ministries. Beginning with a survey of the history of health ministry in the church, Evans demonstrates that what is needed is not to invent health ministries, but to recapture the spirit of the church as a health institution,...

Divine Worship and Human Healing: Liturgical Theology at the Margins of Life and Death

By Bruce T. Morrill Would many believers consider a wake or funeral an act of worship? What does it mean to say that in anointing the sick or administering Viaticum to the dying humans are healed? Such questions plumb the biblical and traditional depths of the paschal mystery. Just as Jesus’s ministry at the social-religious margins revealed the center of his faith in God’s reign, so also the church’s ministry to...

Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome: A Memoir of Humor and Healing in 30 Religions

By  Reba Riley   Reba Riley’s twenty-ninth birthday was not a good time to undertake a spiritual quest, but when an untreatable chronic illness prompted her to focus on one thing she could fix — her whopping case of Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome — she undertook a challenge: Visit thirty religions before her thirtieth birthday. This was transformation by spiritual shock therapy. Reba would find peace and healing . . . if it...

Church Hurt: The Wounded Trying to Heal

By Angela Corprew-Boyd The body of Christ is full of people who have been wounded by Christians or the church. Author Dr. Angela Corprew-Boyd helps the hurting recognize they are not alone and provides them with wisdom and knowledge to reach out to Christ and receive deliverance from wounds that have made them bitter, resentful, and less effective in ministry. Church leaders and laypeople will benefit from Dr. Corprew-Boyd’s...

Wounds That Heal: The Importance of Church Discipline Within Balthasar Hubmaier’s Theology

By Simon Victor Goncharenko   Is church discipline really necessary? One sixteenth-century Anabaptist reformer certainly thought so. A contemporary of Luther and Zwingli, Balthasar Hubmaier believed that church discipline was so important that he included the doctrine in every major area of his theology. Not only did church discipline appear in his doctrine of humanity, salvation, and the church, as a theoretical construct, but he...

Health, Healing and the Church’s Mission: Biblical Perspectives and Moral Priorities

By Willard M. Swartley   Does the Christian community have the resources to develop a coherent response to health care challenges today? Accounting for biblical, theological and church-historical streams, Willard Swartley divulges a long tradition of healing and health care inherited by Christians today. Beginning with in-depth studies of Old and New Testament understandings of healing, the book surveys three millennia of biblical and...

Healing Your Church Hurt: What To Do When You Still Love God But Have Been Wounded by His People

By Stephen Mansfield If you’ve been part of a church, you have probably suffered a “church hurt” — or know someone who has. Maybe the pastor had an affair or the congregation fought over money or the leaders were disguising gossip as “prayer.” Stephen Mansfield knows how it feels. Though he is now a New York Times bestselling author, he was a pastor for more than 20 years, and he loved it — until he learned how much a church can hurt....

Making Your Church a House of Healing

By Michael Gemignani   Author, pastor, and spiritual director Michael Gemignani affirms that Jesus Christ established the church primarily as an instrument of spiritual healing. Each local congregation, as the Body of Christ on earth, should, therefore, have spiritual healing as the focus of its ministry. In this practical primer for churches, Gemignani explores these key questions: • What is spiritual healing? • Why is it so...

Journey Into Wholeness: Prayer for Inner Healing, an Essential Ministry of the Church

By Alan Guile Drawing on forty years’ experience in this ministry, the author shows how prayer helps people to emerge from their past hurts and limitations, and gradually reclaim their real selves under the awesome power of God’s love. Powerful testimonies underline his call for the Church to empower clergy and laity to meet the needs of people suffering in a wide range of stressful life situations. The stories of some of...

Healing Touch: The Church’s Forgotten Language

By Zach Thomas In this helpful book, the author shows how clergy, friends, and congregations can reclaim the ancient practice of healing touch. He presents biblical principles that encourage wholesome behavior and protect against unhealthy touch. He provides a model for reflecting on touch in pastoral care, offers case studies that demonstrate how and when clients should be referred to body-work therapies, and provides congregations...

Healed, Restored, Forgiven: Liturgies, Prayers and Readings for the Ministry of Healing

By John Gunstone This book is designed to be a devotional and liturgical resource for all involved in the ministry of healing. It includes prayers and readings to use on a one-to-one basis in pastoral care and liturgies for healing services whether seen as part of the Eucharist or stand-alone. Increasingly, physical health is seen in a wider context of wellbeing and liturgies are also included for the ministry of...

Churches That Heal: Becoming a Church That Mends Broken Hearts and Restores Shattered Lives

By Doug Murren Why should churches heal? Does your church touch the lives of broken people and bring healing to their hearts? How does a church become that healing force that glorifies God and impacts whole communities? In a desperately hurting world full of toxic relationships, crippled values, and mutilated morality, lives are crying out for real healing — not drug-induced solutions, not psychobabble Band-Aids, but authentic answers...

Healing from the Heart: A Guide to Christian Healing for Individuals and Groups

By Rochelle Graham, Flora Litt, & Wayne Irwin To have health is to have a balance and harmony between the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and relational aspects of the self. In healing, we endeavor to restore this balance when it has become off kilter. In Christian scripture and liturgy there is a rich history of healing. Healing from the Heart traces the tradition of Christian healing, and explores the mystery of prayer....

The Church’s Healing Ministry: Practical and Pastoral Reflections

By David Atkinson Healing is one of the fundamental aspects of Christian ministry, reaching into every area of personal and public life. Leading ethicist David Atkinson asks whether suffering can ever be creative and explores how today’s conversations between theology, psychology, and medical science are shaping our understanding of healing. He offers a practical and pastoral theology that embraces healing’s different...

A Touching Place: The Ministry of Healing in the Local Church

By John Gunstone   This is a practical handbook for all local churches that are developing the ministry of healing. It explores biblical teaching on healing, healing through the sacraments, creating prayer ministry teams, training, planning and conducting healing services, accountability, boundaries and confidentiality, the ministry of listening and much more. In a sensitive area where the highest standards of conduct are vital, here...

The Prophetic Church: Wielding the Power to Change the World

By R. Loren Sandford  In this book Loren Sandford provides powerful visions and real-life examples of what a healthy prophetic community looks like. In this book Loren Sandford provides powerful visions and real-life examples of what a healthy prophetic community looks like. He helps believers find their place in “lighthouse churches.” In this process they find places of refuge where they can encounter God’s healing...

Growing a Healing Ministry: A Resource for Congregations & Communities

By Kathy Edmison   This book is based directly on the experience and wisdom of those who have established energy-touch healing ministries in congregational settings. (Publisher’s description) Available at Christian Book