The healing activity — anointing with oil,Guest Posting laying on of hands and prayer – can be administered in many settings: hospital visitation, home visitation, nursing home visitation, church chapel, church sanctuary and, of course, a formal healing service involving the entire church. If your church currently has no healing ministry, stepwise incremental progress is recommended.

First, get the approval and support of the pastor and other church leadership. Without such approval, the healing ministry will always be a fringe activity outside the mainstream and viewed with suspicion. The pastor, in particular, must offer support from the pulpit even if he is not an active participant in the various healing activities. Second, create a chapel (if one does not exist), where people can come at specified times and receive the healing activity from designated individuals who are called to this ministry. Third, at the conclusion of each church service at the time of invitation to come forward and make a confession of faith, the pastor can issue an invitation to come forward for the healing activity, once again administered by designated individuals who are called to this ministry. The chapel healing ministry and the healing ministry at the conclusion of each service should be offered to the entire community of potential church family and not just to the existing church congregation. A message of invitation on your church sign would be appropriate.

Once the church has progressed through the chapel healing ministry and the healing ministry at the conclusion of each service, the church can conduct a formal healing service. A formal healing service involves the entire church and is usually held in the Sanctuary. The order of events for a formal healing service is flexible. Here is a sample order.

Healing Service Order

Introduction
We gather here responding to the instructions of Jesus to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick. All sickness, disease and disability were considered forms of satanic oppression; therefore, in freeing people from them Jesus demonstrated the presence of the kingdom of God. Three elements of healing are mentioned in the New Testament [prayer (James 5:14; Acts 28:8), anointing with oil (James 5:14; Mark 6:13) and laying on of hands (Mark 16:18; Acts 28:8)]. The early church combined these three elements into a single activity with the objective of healing. We will do the same.

Prayer
Almighty God, who inspired Your servant Luke the Physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of Your Son: Graciously continue in Your Church the love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of Your Name, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Hymn
Optional

Devotional
In Luke 9:1-2; Mark 6:7,12-13 and Mat 10:1,7-8, Jesus said to preach the kingdom of God and heal the sick. This instruction was given to the twelve. In Luke 10:1, 8-9, 17, Jesus said to heal the sick who are there and tell them the kingdom of God is near you. This instruction was given to the seventy two. There is also a common theme about healing found throughout the ministry of Jesus. It begins with the apocalyptic assumption that creation has been seized by a personal, cosmic force and God is now battling this force to rescue His creation. Jesus understood Himself to be the one in whom this battle was to be played out in a decisive way. He came to ‘destroy the works of the devil’ (1 John 3:8; Heb 2:14) and establish God’s domain on earth. Every healing by Jesus marked an advance toward establishing the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of Satan. Consequently, in contrast with any view suggesting that disease somehow serves a divine purpose, Jesus always viewed disease as the work of the enemy. He consistently treated diseased people as casualties of war. Furthermore, rather than accepting their circumstances as mysteriously fitting into God’s sovereign plan, Jesus revolted against them as something that God did not will and something that ought to be vanquished by God’s power. All sickness, disease and disability were considered forms of satanic oppression, and so in freeing people from them Jesus demonstrated the presence of the kingdom of God. The text in chapters 9 and 10 of Luke and the unique roll of healing in the great war between good and evil seem to suggest that the instruction to heal the sick is just as universal, for each Christian and the church as a whole, as the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.