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Experiencing Healing Prayer: A journey from hurts to wholeness

Author:	Rick Richardson
Published By:	IVP (Leicester)
Pages:	248
Price:	£8.99
ISBN:	1 84474 084 6

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

>This is a difficult book to review because at different points it embodies insights that are wise and thoughtful and those which are trite and self-centred. It may simply be that the author has had a long pastoral ministry in the States and that this book does not travel well.

I warmed to the assertion that the focus of healing is not primarily on an escape from pain, but rather transformation into a more whole person, (p.27). There are six helpful “signposts” about what it means to engage in healing ministry and these are explained and appropriately re-stated throughout the book. It is quickly made clear that Richardson is speaking primarily about the healing of emotional scars and hurts, often around gender identity and confusion or derived from the mother or father relationship. I warm to statements that describe prayer for healing as “loving people well by seeking their wholeness in Christ” but despair that it’s not until page 191 that there is any hint that healing is about anything other than personal well-being and “how I am”.

The book is written in an easy style and with great honesty and care, but the ‘matey’ conversationalisms will not be everyone’s cup of tea. The statement “I was to live in loving dialogue with God for this season and write the book that my soul needed” (p.68) does not endear the book to me!

There is however a very good chapter about dangers that can arise in a healing ministry - spiritual pride and elitism, of creating a culture of dependency (not of seeking maturity), of the false hope of quick fixes. Similarly an appendix deals (albeit too briefly) with issues of confidentiality and accountability. The author often talks about being “biblical”, but the book does not examine texts in any detail. A section on “Cultural and Biblical Sources of Self” is more about the former than the latter (and I’m afraid the extensive Star Trek references were lost on me!).

The book may be helpful for ministers and lay pastoral leaders to use and from which to distil some of the good points, but I don’t see it as a helpful addition to the bookstall of the local British church.