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Old Wine, New Wineskins: The Rise of Healing Rooms in
Revival
Pentecostalism
Margaret M. Poloma
Divine healing was an integral part of the ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth and of the early Christian church. It is not without
significance that nearly one fifth of the Gospels is devoted to
accounts of healing, and the Acts of the Apostles (a biblical
account of the history of early Christendom) includes many stories
of miraculous healings. Divine healing had remained (more or less)
a normative expectation in the early church for nearly three
centuries.1 It was with the increased institutionalization of
Christianity and the eventual development of an Aristotelian-based
theology dichotomiz-ing body and soul that divine healing was
downplayed in favor of secular medicine.
While Catholicism left room for faith healing in its folk
religion of pilgrimages and apparitions, Reformation Protestantism
(for the most part) inherited a theology in which faith healing was
regarded as little more than superstition. Theologians may have
acknowledged that miraculous healing occurred in Jesus' ministry
and could be found among early Christians to lend an impetus to the
development of Christianity, but such "signs and wonders" were no
longer normative experiences. Influenced by the Enlightenment,
Catholics and Protestants alike (in both liberal and conservative
dress) shared a common skepticism about so-called faith healing at
the onset of the twentieth century.
Rumors of divine healing, however, could be heard from time to
time in new religious groups that encouraged its belief and
practice. One of the earliest American groups to advocate healing
was the Society of Friends, with George Fox (the founder of the
Quakers) having a significant healing ministry. It was not unusual
for American religious movements birthed in the fervor of
revivalism (including the Shakers, Mormons, Noyesites, and
Adventists) to encourage the practice of healing prayer.2
1 See Morton Kelsey, Healing and Christianity (New York: Harper
and Row, 1973); and F. S. MacNutt, The Nearly Perfect Crime: How
the Church Almost Killed the Ministry of Healing (Chosen Books,
2005).
2 F. G. Chappell, "Healing Movements," in S. M. Burgess and G.
B. McGee, eds., Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements
(Grand Rapids, MI: Regency Reference Library, 1988), 353-74.
2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden pp. 59-71
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Wesleyan revivals of the late nineteenth century added a
theological ratio-nale to the experiential base that served to
restore divine healing as a nor-mative Christian belief and
practice. In the Wesleyan Holiness movement, a direct antecedent to
the Pentecostal revivals of the twentieth century, leaders began to
link a doctrine of Christian perfectionism with divine healing,
teaching that "Christ's atonement provided not only for
justification but also for the purification of the human nature
from sin." According to some perfectionist theology, this
purification would "eliminate illness."3
In sum, there appears to be a strong link between religious
revivalism and divine healing in American religious history. The
practice of divine healing has tended to decline within religious
movements as revivalism gives way to church doctrine and structure.
This routinization of charis-matic healing has been experienced
throughout the two millennia of Christian history, with the
practice being revitalized in recent history dur-ing heights of
religious revivals. With the noteworthy exception of the Church of
Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), however, most groups in the
nineteenth century that practiced divine healing did not make it a
cen-tral tenet of faith. It was not until the twentieth century and
the rise of Pentecostalism, with intermittent waves of revival
washing across its shores during its one hundred-year history, that
divine healing once again assumed a central role in orthodox
Christian practice.
Divine Healing in Revival Context
The belief in and practice of divine healing within American
Protestantism experienced revitalization through the healings
reported during the revivals of the late nineteenth century and the
emergence of Pentecostalism in the first quarter of the twentieth
century. One of the best-known and most controversial historical
figures in the early healing movement is John Alexander Dowie
(1847-1907), founder of the Christian Catholic Church and the
Utopian religious community of Zion City in Illinois. The 1893
Chicago World's Fair provided a public forum for Dowie to practice
his healing powers in meetings he conducted across the street from
popular attractions. His healing ministry flourished in part due to
countless testimonies of healing that allegedly took place as a
result of his prayer. Dowie's restorationist vision for
Christianity lost ground to his critics, however, and he died in
1907, rejected by many who had acclaimed him. With his combative
style, Dowie had alienated even other believers
3 Ibid., 357.
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who practiced healing. His vision of a pristine Christianity
left no room for the medical profession, and he barred its
practitioners from entering his Zion City. Anyone who sought
Dowie's prayers for healing was required to relinquish all medical
treatment, relying solely on the power of faith to heal.4
Although Dowie died during the height of the Azusa Street
Revival (1906-9) that gave birth to Pentecostalism, he is commonly
seen as an important forerunner of the Pentecostal Movement.
Particularly relevant for this discussion is Dowie's establishment
of "healing homes" and his influence on John G. Lake, the
Pentecostal evangelist who is regarded as the grandfather of the
healing rooms movement. Dowie's ministry estab-lished what he
called "healing homes" to replace hospitalsplaces where those with
severe illnesses moved and where they received prayer until they
were either totally healed or died. Dowie became a mentor to Lake
when Lake's wife was instantly healed from tuberculosis after Dowie
prayed for her. Following the healing, Lake joined Dowie's ministry
and served as an elder in the Zion Catholic Apostolic Church.5
Eight years into his healing ministry with Dowie, Lake
experienced another spiritual breakthrough. As he and a friend were
praying for heal-ing for a woman in a wheelchair, Lake felt as if
he had "passed under a shower of warm tropical rain, which was not
falling on me but through me. My spirit and soul and body, under
this influence was soothed into such a deep calm as I had ever
known."6 Lake believed he heard the Spirit speak to him and tell
him that he was now "baptized in the Holy Spirit." Nearly
immediately Lake, his prayer partner, and the woman all began to
experience the "rush of power" that they attributed to the Spirit
of God.
Shortly after this perceived anointing (and after Dowie's death
in 1907), Lake and his family set out for mission fields in Africa.
His wife's untimely death in 1908 shortly after they arrived in
Africa failed to dampen Lake's belief in healing. After returning
to the U.S. in 1913, Lake opened Dowie-like healing rooms in
Spokane and Portland, with a view to establishing chains of healing
rooms across the country. He put together a team of men and women
whom he called "healing technicians" who ministered from a suite of
rooms in downtown Spokane from 1914 to 1920. Five
4 E. L. Blumhofer, "Dowie, John Alexander," in S. M. Burgess,
ed., The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002),
586-87.
5 J. R. Ziegler, "Lake, John Graham," in S. M. Burgess, ed., The
New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic
Movements, 828.
6 J. G. Lake, The John G. Lake Sermons on Dominion over Demons,
Disease and Death, ed. G. Lindsay (Dallas: Christ for the Nations
Inc., [1949] 2002), 7.
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years after establishing the Spokane Divine Healing Rooms, Lake
described the work of the "competent staff of ministers" as
follows:
They believed in the Lord as the present, perfect Healer, and
ministered the Spirit of God to the sick through prayer and the
laying on of hands. The records show that we ministered up to 200
persons a day; that of these, 176 were non-church members. The
knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ as the Healer has gripped
the world outside the present Church societies, and the number of
those who believe are increasing with such rapidity that in a short
time they may become a majority in many communities.7
When Lake died of a stroke in 1935 the unfulfilled vision of
establishing a nationwide chain of healing rooms seemed to die with
him.
Although healing had been and remained a central belief and
practice for Pentecostal believers throughout the twentieth
century, the revitalization of dynamic healing practices often came
through famous healing evangelists, including well-known "anointed"
men and women like William Branham (1909-65), Kathryn Kulhman
(1907-76), Oral Roberts (1918-), and Benny Hinn (1952-), rather
than through ministry teams. In teaching common men and women to
function as healers, Lake's healing rooms and their contemporary
counterparts demonstrate that the practice of divine healing is not
the property of a few healing evangelists. Perhaps no single
individual did more to promote this democratized belief during the
last decades of the twentieth century than John Wimber, the founder
of the Association of Vineyard Churches. Wimber conducted many
well-attended conferences on healing in both North America and
abroad during the 1980s and until his death in 1998 that taught
attendees how to pray for healing. It was in Wimberite circles
during the 1990s that revival fires ignited to energize the rebirth
of John G. Lake's vision of a chain of healing rooms, not only
across the nation but also around the globe.8
The 1990s Revivals and the Rebirth of Healing Rooms
The story of the resurrection of the healing rooms at the turn
of the third millennium is rooted in a revival that occurred at
Bethel Assembly of God in Redding, California in 1996.9 Cal Pierce,
a retired real estate
7 Ibid., 127-28. 8 M. M. Poloma, Main Street Mystics. The
Toronto Blessing and Reviving Pentecostalism
(Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2003). 9 Under the
leadership of Pastor Bill Johnson healing rooms were established at
Bethel
Church that predated the establishment of the Spokane healing
rooms. Thirty-three healing rooms were listed throughout California
on the IAHR website in midsummer of 2004, with
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developer who founded the contemporary movement, had an
experience not unlike experiences reported by John G. Lake decades
earlier. Pierce offered the following description of his divine
encounter at a mandatory meeting called for by his pastor at a time
when Pierce would describe himself as being "spiritually
stagnant":
The meeting opened with prayer, and someone led us in a series
of wor-ship choruses. Then, suddenly, Bill [the pastor] was
standing before us. He had his hands upraised to heaven, and he was
saying, "Come, Holy Spirit!" The next thing I remember is that wave
after wave of fire began to course through my body. The flames
seemed to be going deep into my bones, and that made me want to run
or jump or shout or scream or all of those things at once. But I
couldn't move. My feet were stuck to the floor, as if they had been
glued there.10
On seeming impulse and without a clear sense of direction,
Pierce decided to drive north to Spokane for a few days of prayer.
When he made this announcement to his Sunday school class before he
left, a woman in his class spoke up and said, "That's where John G.
Lake was from, and he's buried there." While driving to Spokane,
Pierce was unable to get the Spokane-Lake connection out of his
mind, and he resolved to visit the site of Lake's healing rooms and
his grave. Soon Pierce felt God was call-ing him to move to
Spokanea move that was made possible by numer-ous acts of "divine
serendipity" accompanied with prophetic words with a seeming divine
mandate to "re-dig the ancient wells."11 By the summer of 1999, Cal
Pierce had settled in Spokane and opened his envisioned healing
rooms in the building where healing evangelist John G. Lake had
established his healing rooms in the 1910s. John G. Lake's mantle
for the establishment of healing seemed to have fallen on Cal
Pierce and, with it, the unfolding of prophetic events.
Around the same time that Pierce's vision for healing rooms
around the country was being born, another revivalist was sharing
his mandate
six more "opening soon." The healing rooms at Bethel Church in
Redding, California, however, were not listed as a member of
IAHR.
10 Cal Pierce, Preparing the Way (Hagerstown, MD: McDougal
Publishing, 2001), 34. 11 Ibid. The 1990s prophecies and visions
known in some revival circles included
words about "healing rooms." When Cal Pierce moved to Spokane in
the spring of 1999, he produced a brochure describing the healing
rooms and disseminated it as widely as pos-sible. The brochure fell
into the hands of two men from Vancouver, Washington who had made a
series of trips to Spokane "to prepare for what the Spirit is
saying will be a new outpouring of healing upon the city" (Pierce
2001:66). They sought out Pierce after see-ing a copy of his
brochure and hearing a prophecy given by a well-known renewal
prophet, Bob Jones, in Spokane in 1996. The gist of the prophecy
was that a new healing anoint-ing would be "brought into the city
and would eventually go from here to all the world."
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to establish healing rooms in the Cleveland, Ohio area. John
Rowe, an evangelist from Arkansas, had been conducting revivals in
northeastern Ohio and eventually moved to the Cleveland area.
Despite a visit to the Spokane Healing Rooms, Rowe died of colon
cancer at the age of forty-eight with his vision still unfulfilled.
He did leave a folder about healing rooms with a friend, however,
to give to an unknown and unnamed recipient "as the Lord leads."
The recipient turned out to be Jim White, an evangelist in the
Cleveland area whom Rowe had never met or even heard of.12
After Rowe's death, White (who knew nothing of Rowe or the
concept of "healing rooms") had an open vision during a revival
servicea vision so real that "I thought everyone else was seeing it
too." In the vision a man clad in Olympic attire was running across
the church stage with a gold torch in his hands bearing the words
"healing rooms." The man ran past White, handed him the torch, and
ran off into a corner of the sanctuary that looked to White "like
heaven." The same night that White had the vision, an elderly man
handed him a blue file folder. White tossed it on the seat of his
car, but failed to open it until two days later. Meanwhile, White
was on the Internet trying to find information on "healing rooms"
and discovered the Spokane Healing Rooms website. When White
finally did open the blue folder, he found a note from John Rowe
that read "by the time you read this I will have died and gone to
heaven." (About six weeks after the vision an anonymous person sent
White a photograph of Rowe, and he was certain that the man of his
vision and the one who left the blue folder and note were one and
the same.) Within a matter of months and after countless other
divinely serendipitous events (including White's healing from
cancer in Spokane in May 2001), the Healing Rooms of Greater
Cleveland opened their doors in October 2001 amidst a strip of
medical offices in Parma, Ohio.13
The Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland (HRGC) moved from the
southwestern suburb of Parma to the northeastern suburb of
Willowick,
12 The narrative of White's ministry as an evangelist provides
another complementary account of White's perception of divine
guidance. White had been leading a revival that developed in late
1997 at an Assemblies of God church in an eastern suburb of
Cleveland that lasted for three years. For White, it was a "dream
come true." One night he heard the Holy Spirit ask: "Do you want to
be popular or do you want to be effective?" White knew the
"correct" answer and sensed that he was to pull back from the
church revival (and his livelihood from his ministry) to pray and
fast while waiting for further directions. They came in the form of
the Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland.
13 S. Roth, "It's Supernatural: Guest Jim White," Video, Code
IS245 (Brunswick, GA: Messianic Vision, 2003).
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Ohio in March 2004. HRGC is but one of over two hundred healing
rooms listed on the International Association of Healing Rooms
website in the United States, Canada, England, Continental Europe,
and approxi-mately a dozen other locations. The healing rooms
movement has grown rapidly within Pentecostal/Charismatic
communities, with each entry undoubtedly having its own story of
visions, prophecy, and divine serendipity narrated in the same
mystical chord as that of the Spokane and Cleveland examples.14
What are "Healing Rooms"?
The Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland offer sensitive prayer
for those suffering in their physical bodies. It's a ministry
committed to serving the sick through the ministry of God's Healing
Word, the power of his pres-ence, and compassionate prayer. We
believe that it is God's will that the power of Christ is available
to all who ask. Many who have come experi-enced the miraculous in
their lives. If you're looking for a touch from God, we invite you
to come and receive.
(Brochure for Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland)
Healing rooms are presently being established in
medical/professional office buildings, churches, and independent
"houses" as places where the sick can come for prayer for healing
on a regular basis across North America and internationally. At the
time of this writing, over two hun-dred independent healing rooms
have sprung up throughout North America and overseas that are
listed as members of Pierce's International Association of Healing
Rooms (IAHR). This figure is double the one hundred mem-bers
reported two years earlier, and the movement shows no signs of
slow-ing down.15
The International Association of Healing Rooms in Spokane
provides a covering for member groups. IAHR's website
(www.healingrooms.com) describes its purpose as follows:
We are an association of Healing Rooms Ministries in churches
and cities with a common vision to establish healing back into the
body of Christ.
Poloma, Main Street Mystics. 15 Pierce was not the only one to
hear the call to "re-dig the wells of John G. Lake"
in Spokane. Jerry and Mary Breeden, who since 1973 had
reportedly been "asking God to use our lives as he had the life of
John G. Lake," received instructions similar to Pierce's in January
1999. In August 1999 they purchased Lake's home, where they now
live and minister healing to people. In August 2001 they reopened
the original site of John G. Lake's Apostolic Tabernacle. (See
www.johnglake.com) Breeden's Divine Healing Institute of Spokane,
although similar in ministry and purpose, is not affiliated with
Pierce's IAHR.
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Our commission is based on Mark 16:17-18: "And these signs shall
follow those that believe . . . they shall lay hands on the sick,
and they shall recover." The vision is to see Healing Rooms set in
around the world. Our goal is to establish uniformity and
accountability in each work by offering, through an association,
the tools to properly equip each healing room. Our focus must be on
the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to work through us to
heal the sick.
Most members of IAHR share Dowie's and Lake's tenet that divine
healing is something to be expected, teaching that just as
salvation comes through Jesus' atoning death, so does healing. They
also share the vehicle of healing homes or healing rooms (often set
up outside the church proper) to conduct ongoing prayer for the
sick to which all (church and unchurched) can come for healing.
That ordinary Christians volunteer their time as ministers in these
healing rooms is a strategy found throughout this new healing
movement. Followers of the movement do not, however, share the
disdain that Dowie and Lake had for the medical establishment.
While their theology of healing does not disparage modern medicine,
it does express greater regard for divine power to heal than for
the efficacy of medicine. With an eye on avoiding potential
lawsuits, pray-ers are instructed not to offer medical advice and
not to "give direction for someone's life." The task of the pray-er
is not to give advice of any kind but "to release God's healing
power" to those who come to the healing rooms.16
The theology underlying Cal Pierce's and IAHR teaching shares
with Dowie, Lake, and their followers an insistence that healing
and salvation are intimately related. Just as conservative
Protestants profess that salvation comes by faith, so too is
healing believed to be a result of faith. Accordingly, the
"atonement" of Jesus' crucifixion guarantees not only spiritual
salva-tion but also physical healing for all who believe in and
accept it. Sickness is seen as the work of the devil, while healing
is seen as the work of God. The articulation of this healing
theology resonates with the so-called "Word of Faith" message made
popular in the Charismatic movement during the last half of the
twentieth century by "faith healers" like Oral Roberts, Kenneth
Hagin, and Kenneth Copeland.17 Pierce succinctly explains his
position as follows:
16 The "Release of Liability Form" for persons seeking prayer at
the HRGC includes the following statement: "I acknowledge and agree
that I will not accept counsel or advice directing me to cease
taking medication that I am presently taking. I further agree that
my personal physician will be the only one to advise me to cease
taking any medication."
17 On October 2, 2002 I was presented with a copy of Aaron D.
Lewis' book Healing for the Twenty-first Century during the
training seminar. The book is one of the most recent of many books
written by Charismatic/Pentecostal healing evangelists in the past
one hun-
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Our faith does not depend on how we feel, because it is more
real than our sickness. If the Word of God created the world and
everything in it, then doesn't it make sense that the world and
everything in it is subject to the Creator?
If Jesus came to destroy the work of the devil, and the
infirmity that is in us is the work of the devil, then that work
needs to be destroyed. That is a message for Christians. We would
not allow the lost to come into our church services and become
involved in our programs and think nothing of it. We would have a
burden to get them saved. Still we allow sick peo-ple to be
involved in our churches at every level, and we think nothing of
it. Why let them suffer? It is time to prevail against sickness.
Jesus came to destroy it, just as He came to destroy our sin.18
Despite the prevailing teachings, the protocol for healing
prayer min-istry at HRGC offers instructions that would (if
followed) soften the impact of a theology that would appear to
"blame the victim" for his or her ill-ness. Underlined in the
training manual is the statement, "Never make anyone feel they are
unable to receive healing because they lack 'faith' or are
resisting the Holy Spirit. We're called to encourage, love and
heal, not to speak words that will bring rejection or
discouragement."
Not surprisingly, those involved in the healing rooms movement
are subject to terminal illness, just as are those who do not share
their beliefs. As we have seen, Dowie suffered a stroke just as he
planned to reproduce Zions in other areas, Lake's wife died just as
they began their healing ministry in Africa, and Lake died of a
stroke without seeing his vision actualized. Closer to the
contemporary healing rooms, John Rowe, the itinerant evangelist who
was given the first vision for establishing heal-ing rooms in
Cleveland, died of colon cancera disease that also threat-ened Jim
White during the time his vision was unfolding. It is interesting
to note that Jim White, who believes he has received the mantle of
John Rowe in successfully opening the HRGC, also contracted colon
cancer but was healed during a visit to Spokane before the
scheduled surgery.19
(White did experience the death of a close friend of cancer,
however,
dred years that teaches variations of what has come to be called
the "Word Faith" approach to healing. This approach has great
similarities to the nineteenth-century Mind Thought and the
twentieth-century New Age movements in emphasizing the role that
"correct think-ing" plays in the healing process.
18 Pierce, Preparing the Way, 130-31. 19 In February 2001during
the period of early visions and eight months before the
October opening of the HRGCJim White believed the Holy Spirit
told him, "Thousands fly into Cleveland to receive healing from
Cleveland Clinic. Thousands will come to receive healing from the
healing rooms." Hundreds, if not thousands, have come to the HRGC
for training on how to establish healing rooms and conferences, and
White is in demand as a national and international
speaker/consultant for the larger movement.
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despite the many prayers offered for her healing.) The reality
of sickness and death in the midst of the movement is noted but is
seen as an enemy that will be conquered rather than a cause for
defeat.
A Report from the Field
In September 2002 I signed up for a four-day training program to
pre-pare me to serve as a pray-er on the volunteer prayer teams at
HRGC. Joined by a team of twelve lay persons who came in from
England to learn how to establish healing rooms, I underwent
training that included basic teaching and prayer for healing
empowerment as well as additional insights as to how to establish
healing rooms. I began serving on the prayer teams in the fall of
2002, originally around three times a month and, after HRGC's move
in March 2004, approximately twice a month. Since pray-ers always
pray with at least one and usually two other team members, my field
notes suggest differences depending on the prayer partner.
Moreover, despite efforts at "quality control", not surprisingly
not all rules are always adhered to.20 Significant differences
among pray-ers exist that go beyond nuances in interpretation and
application of the basic training. In praying with dozens of
different women and men, I have observed differences in natural
giftedness (or, from a charismatic per-spective, differences in
"empowerment") that affect the outcome of the ministry.
One example will suffice. Upon arrival, each first-time client
is asked to fill out a brief informational form and to sign a
consent form. The infor-mational form is brought to a prayer team
by the staff person who has welcomed the client. Ordinarily the
prayer team reviews the form and then immediately proceeds into the
prayer room to pray for the client. After my prayer partners and I
reviewed the form and noted the client's request to be healed of
migraine headaches, I proceeded to get up and move toward the door
leading to the prayer room. One of the women said, "No. Wait. We
need to pray before going to the room to find out
20 For example, on one of my first visits, I joined two other
women who had been serving as prayer volunteers for several months.
Although I said nothing, I noted they had spent a considerable
amount of time talking with the client trying to "diagnose" the
prob-lem. Volunteers were discouraged from long conversations with
the client that too readily lend themselves to advice giving. One
of the women said to me after the prayer time was over, "I know we
are not supposed to do so much talking, but you know how it goes."
I also noted that over the months additional chairs were removed
from the prayer rooms, allowing the client to sit but the pray-ers
to remain standing in an effort to curb the talking.
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what the Lord wants." We prayed for five or ten minutes until
the woman received what she believed was a "message from the Lord."
It dealt with the client's relationship with her mother and the
client's need to forgive her. As we entered the room we introduced
ourselves to the client and asked her what she wished us to pray
for. Knowing nothing about the "word" that the prayer team member
believed she had received, the client replied, "Originally I wanted
prayer for my headaches, but I believe I need to ask you first to
pray for my relationship with my mother."
Despite attempts to discourage the development of name healers
within the healing room through prayer teams and to keep all
volunteers "on the same page," volunteers cannot help but see
differences in spiritual intu-ition and the growth in "empowerment"
as pray-ers exercise healing prayer. But it is also worthy of note
how often teams (despite differences in style, theologies, and
personalities) work together as "tag teams" playing their prayer
off one another and somehow winding up on the "same page." Out of
such team prayer comes a distinct message that usually is evident
to all, including the prayer client.
Following a time of extemporaneous prayer among the team members
that lasts an average of approximately twenty minutes, someone will
turn to the client and ask how he or she is doing. Although I have
never wit-nessed a dramatic and miraculous healing during my hours
of service, I have yet to see a person report no change: tension
and anxiety may dis-sipate, physical pain may be alleviated, peace
may blanket the person. The most common response is a deeper sense
of the presence and love of God.
Clients regularly report healings, although there is no
calculation of percentages or attempts made to verify reports
medically. The time and resources are put into prayer ministry
rather than evaluation research. The testimonies are used to
encourage and inspire the pray-ers and their clients to expect
healing such as those found in "Healing Headlines."21 "Healing
Headlines" is a booklet containing about three dozen short
testimonials distributed to prayer team members and made available
to visitors to the HRGC. The testimonies reflect a blend of the
supernatural accounts and healing through modern medicine. Cathy's
report "Fractured knee cap healeddoctors say, 'It's a miracle' "
and Kate's "Ulcers healed in Jesus' name" reflect the miracle
mentality that is found in many one-line testi-monials. Matt's
report blending the medical component with the healing
21 "Healing Headlines. Testimonies of God's Healing Power"
(2004), available from Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland,
Willowick, Ohio 44095.
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testimony represents a minority narrative: "Diagnosed with
non-Hodgkins lymphoma in August 2003; received 3 rounds of chemo.
Cat scan on 11-14/03 reveals 'NO CANCER.' " A range of testimonies
can be found in the booklet, from the healing of broken bones to
arthritis, various forms of cancer, migraines, and backaches.
Sprinkled into the more common accounts of healing are more
dramatic ones that have pray-ers expecting more to come by way of
healing miraclesmore miracles in which the blind see and the lame
begin to walk and even the dead are raised. In a recent
conversation with a prayer team member from the Spokane Healing
Rooms, I asked him to share the most memorable healing in which he
has been involved. Josh responded with the following account:
That's easy. A woman came in with a shriveled arm that was all
withered and discolored as a result of an automobile accident. I
don't know why the doctors didn't amputate it; she could not use it
at all and it looked terrible. When we asked what she wanted, she
said want to be able to pick up my grandchildren.' As we began to
pray, I felt the Lord telling me to rub the arm with healing oil.
It was hard to do; the arm appeared ugly and cold. But I began to
do as the Lord instructed. I couldn't believe it! As I began to rub
oil over her arm, color came into it and the arm came to life. By
the time we were finished with prayer, she was able to use her arm.
She just wept with joyand I stood there totally amazed.
Accounts like these are the fuel that feeds the expectation of
the healing rooms staff and volunteers of seeing greater healing
miracles and seeing them with regularity.
Some Concluding Thoughts
This paper undoubtedly raises more questions than it answers. It
has limited itself to a description of the rise of contemporary
healing rooms through the lenses of the Pentecostal Charismatic
worldview22 and through my own participant observation at the
Healing Rooms of Greater Cleveland. No attempt has been made to
study the efficacy of healing prayer, differences and similarities
among healing rooms, the clients who frequent the healing rooms, or
the volunteers who serve as pray-ers. Hopefully this preliminary
report will serve as a catalyst for further research.
Although divine healing has become a doctrine for many
Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians, this ministry waxes and
wanes under the
This is described in detail in Poloma, Main Street Mystics.
70
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Old Wine, New Wineskins The Rise of Healing Rooms in Revival
Pentecostalism
forces of what I have called elsewhere "the routinization of
charisma."23
The so-called gifts of the Spirit, including prophecy in its
various forms and healing, have blossomed during times of revival
but wilted when revival fires have grown cold. Attempts to create
doctrine out of unpre-dictable experiences of healing have
historically led to extremes, including attacks on medical science
and a tendency to blame the sick person for a failure to be healed,
that caused many modern Pentecostals to downplay its practice.
Although professions of belief in healing have persisted in
cultural Pentecostalism, expectations and testimonies of miraculous
heal-ing tend to wane as the movement experiences routinizing
forces.
Revival fires have continued to erupt periodically during
Pentecostalism's hundred-year history, and with each revival came
new healing movements. The revival of the 1990s was no exception.
Although revival fires may have been reduced to glowing embers in
North America, a contemporary healing rooms movement has emerged
that includes expectations of early Pentecostalism while eschewing
the extremes of its earliest days. Moving the practice of healing
out of isolated churches and into the marketplace, the healing
rooms movement may have developed a structure less sus-ceptible to
the forces of routinization that have domesticated earlier heal-ing
movements. Its structure, beliefs, and practices fit well with an
era that is somewhat skeptical of allopathic medicine and is
seeking com-plementary alternatives to the biomedical model to
enhance health and well-being. The healing rooms movement may just
have found a niche in a postmodern culture in which spirituality
and health, rather than being competitors, are seen as companions
on life's journey.
23 See M. M. Poloma, The Charismatic Movement: Is There a New
Pentecost? (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982), and The Assemblies of
God at the Crossroads: Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).
71
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^ s
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