Get Inspired Into Healing

Announcing Healing Groups

Healing Support Group Head Start – Meeting details are here.

This blog was updated on 20230818 with the latest details on Healing Groups and meeting times.

It’s been a long time coming. My husband and I are launching online healing groups as are our non-church answer to the church problem we have been experiencing for the past few years, namely that churches expect people to join their mission, instead of being an equipping center to help each person progress in his or her own God-given mission.

Fortunately, there is nowhere in the Bible or in our prayers that directs what church is supposed to look like. Anyone who tells you, for example, that people must gather in buildings, must listen to sermons, must pray as a group, or must sing worship music as a group is just superimposing their human church culture onto the scriptures. In the Bible, Yeshua says that where two or more believers called out of the world unto their individual, God-given missions (ekklesia) gather, there he is. Paul writes that the ekklesia should not forsake gathering, as in two or more people getting together. Every other reference to how church is “supposed” to be done in that gathering is inferred or based on the culture and times in which that church met.

A Unique Approach

That’s why we want to offer two types of groups that break the American Church cultural mold in which we are stuck. We want these groups to be focused on helping people move towards their God-given missions:

  • Healing Support Groups for anyone pursuing healing in any area of their lives. This can be relational healing like being stuck in singleness or fixing a broken marriage, financial healing like getting out of poverty, emotional healing like from a divorce or a hurtful childhood, mental healing like tearing down hurtful thought-patterns, physical healing like from diabetes or being overweight or cancer, or spiritual healing like from tormenting nightmares or feeling separated from God.
  • Healing Companion Groups for anyone who is directly affected by anyone who needs healing. This can be family members or caregivers of anyone like those in the group above, doctors and therapists and coaches and other service providers to people like those in the group above, and anyone else bothered or affected by another person’s lack of healing.

We will also launch some Healing Group Helper events like supplemental online teaching seminars or equipping events, as well as develop some materials that members in the first two groups can use, if they want to. These are to take the burden off of group members to teach one another how to heal so that they can all focus on sharing about their healing journeys. However, this is a longer ways off.

Why Healing Groups?

There are two things God asks us to do: invite him/her to heal our hurts, then mature into the fullness of his/her perfect design for us. Healing and maturity must be the cornerstones of our spiritual walk. Without healing in some area of your life, you can never achieve maturity, so we are starting with the foundation first.

Healing and maturity must be the cornerstones of our spiritual walk.

TenayBenes.com

Healing Groups have certain characteristics that we believe are needed for people in this generation. They are:

  • Online, not in a building. This makes them accessible to anyone, anywhere, especially people who don’t have access to regular or safe transportation or dependent care. It also allows people to cross-pollinate their healing journeys across the world. In addition, it allows hurting people to remain anonymous if they want to. Finally, it keeps costs low so that each group can be self-sustaining by voluntary donations.
  • People-focused not program-focused. This makes the primary mission of each group to partner with the healing work God is doing in each person’s life, instead of telling people to partner with whatever God is doing in that church. After all, God made church for man, not man for church.
  • 12-step model not a lecture series model. This allows its members to pursue continuous personal transformation through a belief in their Higher Power, instead of getting puffed up with too much knowledge from too many sermons. Part of this model invites members to regularly share what God is doing in their lives in every meeting, and requires all other members to silently listen with acceptance, which builds spiritual unity. The Healing Headquarters will offer supplemental teaching/equipping materials and events to share our understanding of the healing journey with others for their consideration.
  • Spiritual not religious. This makes groups accessible to anyone who wants to believe that a Higher Power can restore them to health, even if they don’t know who or what that Power is, or agree that it is the same power as their neighbor.
  • Prayer-filled not performance-filled. This makes the primary source of healing in the group the group’s prayers (wishes) to their collective Higher Power (faith) and not each person’s obedience to a specific set of taught behaviors (works).
  • Planting-model not Growing-model. This makes the goal of the groups to stay small and intimate (3 to 10 people or families per group), but to spread the message of healing by faith in a Higher Power by planting new groups. The Healing Headquarters is designed to help any 3 people who get together and call themselves a Healing Group to learn how to run a group and, if they want, to publicize the time and place of that group on our website.
  • Power-centric not leader-centric. This makes them easy to replicate because there are no human leaders in any of the groups, only volunteers that coordinate gatherings. This means people don’t draw their hope and strength from a leader, but from their healing Higher Power, including how that Higher Power expresses him/herself through every member in the group. It also means that groups don’t dissolve if a leader leaves.

See for Yourself!

Will you come and check out our first meeting and bring a friend? Anyone from anywhere around the world who speaks enough English to participate is welcome. Our first meeting is:

Healing Support Group Head Start – Every other Thursday night at 5:45pm Pacific Time, 6:45pm Mountain Time, 7:45pm Central Time, 8:45pm Eastern Time starting Aug 18, 2023

Google Meet Link:
https://meet.google.com/svy-ciqf-ipc

You can get more info at https://benescompanies.com/healing-groups/ and we hope to see you there!

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