AWMI "Healing is Here" Conference Review
Hover over the references to see the Biblical text
A few weeks ago, I attended a four-day, "Healing is Here" conference at Andrew Wommack Ministries International's (AWMI) Charis Bible College in Woodland Park, Colorado. This is a summary of my experience and thoughts.
The conference was worthwhile for me on a couple of counts. Firstly, it helped me understand AWMI's theology of healing a little better. Secondly, I was able to glean some valuable (I hope) insights from the teaching. That said, I found the conference in general very discouraging. It’s focus, as a natural outcome of their theology, was strongly focus on getting healing for yourself, not on healing others. I was also disappointed to find that very few people at the conference had any idea that Andrew Wommack’s theology and practice of healing is not the only theology or practice in the Church. When I brought up other perspectives over lunch, there was no interest in considering any other ideas, and I was quite strongly put down and told I was too weighed down by religion and needed to unlearn all of that. Ironically, the recommended solution for getting rid of all that religion was to do the three-year Bible school at Charis Bible College.
I was also very disappointed in the level of biblical exposition by some speakers. In one session, for example, two speakers discussed Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” One of them used this verse to say faith is a substance, but even if you elect to use the word “substance” in your translation (I would tend toward a word more like confidence, assurance, or even essence) the text very clearly says faith is the substance of the thing hoped for, not of itself. Without the thing hoped for, faith would have no substance, so saying faith itself is a substance, a thing that can be used like a tool (or as “the currency of Heaven”) seems to require applying some undue pressure to the text rather than being a natural reading. The other speaker focused on the words “now faith,” saying that faith is “now faith,” not “yesterday faith.” That point seems quite reasonable as the Greek word for “is” (“now faith IS”) puts faith in the present tense. You cannot, however, get there with the Greek word translated as “now.” That word has no time component to it at all and is actually just a conjunction. It really functions like a verbal semicolon, joining the sentence to the larger context. That session is just one example, but, in general, I was very underwhelmed with the exposition (or lack thereof) by many of the speakers.
Andrew Wommack, however, was always thoughtful in his exposition and had a cohesive theology of healing that he articulated well and did so in a gentle and humble manner. I frequently saw him making himself available to attendees at the start of the day and in the breaks between session. (I would like to know how he and Randy Clark, who was not a speaker at this event, manage their theological differences when they take part in the same conference.) In contrast, most of the speakers seemed to have a very low threshold for anyone who did not believe as they did—at least this is what their manner suggested to me. Of course, that is an entirely subjective opinion and could be completely incorrect. However, given the responses I received from my fellow attendees when I questioned what had been taught, it seemed like the attitude I was perceiving (correctly or not) was also perceived by others and acted as a model for people who attracted to AWMI’s teachings.
One idea that was repeated many times by various of the speakers is the idea that a person cannot be healed unless they have (1) sufficient faith and (2) do not doubt. In fact, getting a sick person to find faith for their own healing is the basic method for AWMI’s healing ministry. This is both directly taught from the stage and strongly practiced. I listened to one lady instructing an obviously crippled woman in a wheelchair to disbelieve what her flesh was telling her and activate her faith so she would be healed. Only once the woman struggled to walk—with two people holding her up—did the lady begin to “agree in prayer” with the crippled woman. AWMI has several video documentaries about people who have been healed of various—in some cases, life threatening—medical conditions, but presents a clear example of the sick person finding faith for their own healing.
This teaching was very discouraging for me. If it were true (and that’s not what I see in the Scriptures), we cannot do as Jesus commanded us because no one would ever get healed on account of someone else's ministering to them, but only on account of their own faith. I even had one conference attender tell me directly, when I pushed him on the point, that he did not think Jesus would be able to heal everyone who would come to him today were he incarnationally here. At another time, I overheard another attendee saying the same thing to the person sitting next to them. The two exceptions to the rule that a person must be healed by their own faith—at least as far as I could discern—are sick children, because they are under the authority of their parents and the parents’ faith can result in their healing, and non-Christians, because they (apparently) neither have faith nor unbelief and are thus have no part to play in their own healing. On that second exception, however, there seemed to be no clear consensus.
Interestingly, one of the workshops focused on healing of emotional problems in order to the heal physical problems caused by them. I’m not sure how this works with the idea that faith is the currency of Heaven, has substance, and can be activated by words. The whole “emotional root” issue seems out of place in the overall theology. Even so, it was, as far as I could tell, commonly understood among attendees. One person told me about a ministry whose sole focus is on researching which emotional problems cause which illnesses. I think the example they gave me was that women’s intestinal problems are almost always caused by bitterness against another female relative. Bitterness against non-relatives caused some other illness, but I don’t recall what they said that was. This is, of course, something we never see taught or modeled in Scripture (please correct me if I'm wrong), and actually comes from teaching the co-evolved with the metaphysical healing movement (a non-Christian movement in the early 1900's) and was brought into Christian circles by Agnes Sanford and adopted by many well respected healing practitioners because they saw it working. The tying of specific issues to specific ailments, however, really represents an extreme of this practice.
But, this is not to say that everything was bad. Something I did find useful, for example, was the explanation that believing you are healed even while still sick is not the same thing as denying the facts. If you are blind, for example, AWMI's teaching would agree with that, because it is a simple fact. However, because the Bible says “by [his] stripes you were healed” (past tense), they would say the truth is different from the facts: healing is already done, and you are a healed person who sickness needs to be driven away, rather than a sick person who needs healing. While I disagree with this idea, it clearly places a strong emphasis on what Jesus has already done, and I have a lot to learn from this school of thought in that regard (although it is not unique to then, of course). Likewise, they take a very active approach to building faith and dealing with unbelief. Some of their methods seem like intentional self-brainwashing, but as my approach has been largely passive, I may benefit from employing some of those practices even if I object to them.
One area of overlap between AWMI’s teaching and my own understanding is the importance of ministering out of intimacy with Jesus. This teaching seemed to be as ubiquitous as the idea that the sick need to have faith to be healed. Scripturally speaking, I don’t think we can argue that this is REQUIRED to minister healing. Prophecy, performing miracles, and even driving out demons can be done without any apparent relationship with Jesus (Matthew 7:21-23), but the outcome for the minister is radically different. Unless we want Jesus to tell us to go away, we do well to develop our own relationship with him. On this point, I heard several statements along the lines of “Stop trying to do it, and let the Spirit [do his work]” or “Do what God is telling you to do. Go where God is telling you to go.” Those sound to me like good general advice for any Christian.
So, I did find some things I could take from the conference and apply personally (although probably not exactly as they would want me to), and I do feel like I have a much clearer understanding of their theology and how it makes sense to them. On the other hand, I found nothing in their biblical exposition to be convincing, so little in my own thinking changed. However, Kevin Grenier, who attended the first and last days of the conference pointed out to me our tendency to reinforce what we already believe. The context of that was the AWMI's propensity to point to someone else’s lack of faith as the reason healing did not come, but it could equally be applied to my review of their theology. So, if the theology I went to the conference with is the same as the theology I left with, I need to consider the possibility that I am falling victim to my own confirmation bias. Obviously, I don’t think that’s the case, but that’s rather the point: “The heart is deceitful above all things And it is extremely sick; Who can understand it fully and know its secret motives?” (Jeremiah 17:9, AMP)
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