From hurt to healed

Formational prayer seminar equips prayerful Christians
through self-restoration

It began as a small group of folks from the Pennsylvania BIC churches of Dillsburg, Mechanicsburg, and Hanover traveling with a few other area churches to attend a seminar at Ashland (Ohio) Seminary in January 2007. The seminar focused on formational prayer, a technique that uses the ministry of the Holy Spirit to work through a Christian “caregiver” in order to bring the healing presence of Jesus Christ into the pain and brokenness of a wounded person. While the focus of the Formational Prayer Seminar led by Dr. Terry Wardle, author of Healing Care, Healing Prayer, was to equip pastors and lay leaders with ways to help position hurting people to receive healing from Jesus, participants shared that they themselves had experienced healing along the way. But it didn’t end there.

In early March 2008, over 130 church and community members took part in a similar four-day seminar held by Terry at Mechanicsburg (Pa.) BIC Church—and experienced a similar feeling of self-healing while working to heal others. “The presence of the Holy Spirit was real in a way that I had not experienced before,” shares Jean Thau, associate pastor at Dillsburg BIC and a caregiver at the seminar. “It was exhilarating, exhausting, joyful, intense, overwhelming, and celebratory!” Mechanicsburg BIC senior pastor Layne Lebo even found himself “experiencing God’s truth, healing and wholeness in a fresh way.” During the event, he “really resonated with hearing [Terry] frame healing and wholeness in the context of removing obstacles that keep the Holy Spirit, who lives within every believer, from being released in our lives.”

Jean summarizes the power of the prayer seminar in her church by saying this: “What is unique about this seminar is the opportunity to be provided with resources that dramatically impact an understanding of our role in positioning someone to receive healing directly from Jesus: The individual seeks healing; the caregiver provides the resources; Jesus provides the healing.  Lives have been changed; there is excitement for this ministry to become an essential part of who we are and how we minister to others; and vision is being cast in the hearts and minds of many.”