Almost 5 years ago now, my attention was arrested  by a phrase on a promotional piece.  It said, "The harvest is plentiful –  It's also broken."  After more than 40 years of leading a church, I  knew that to be profoundly true.  Prior to our days in the Vineyard, we  were leading a church that experienced significant renewal and some  rapid growth.  But I soon realized that we were attracting some very  wounded, broken people.  I secretly feared that if we couldn't bring  healing into their lives, they could soon outnumber us and we would be  in the full-time business of trying to manage dysfunctional  relationships, and nothing else.  If you've ever read THE EMOTIONALLY HEALTHY CHURCH by Peter Scazzero, you know exactly what I mean. 

I  cried out to the Lord to equip us to heal broken people so that they  could become healthy, functional followers of Jesus, and the next  generation of leaders.  How he answered those prayers is a long and  fascinating story of divine appointments which is too lengthy to recount  here, but within a couple of years, we had found training for three  people including myself who consequently saw a remarkable amount of  success in bringing broken people to wholeness by the power of the  Lord.  We became good at it because we had a lot of practice, backed up  with a lot of intercession.  But the demand always exceeded our ability  to provide as the word of healing and freedom spread.

We  cried to the Lord for help.  "Pray the Lord of the harvest that He will  send laborers into the harvest."  We began to put what we had learned  into a course for training others, a course that eventually saw nearly  500 graduates over a 20 year period.  Some came only for the  information, and discovered they needed healing themselves, which  increased our load!  A few others came alongside of us and began to do  what we were doing.  But still, the demand always exceeded our time and  energy to provide that intensive one-on-one counselling experience.  It  was heartbreaking to turn so many away.

Over  the years, I have had colleagues in ministry who tried to discourage me  from counselling because it's hard work, and it's time-consuming.  "Why  do you do this, anyway?" they would ask.  "Why don't you just refer,  like everyone else does?"  My reply was two-fold:  "Jesus commanded me  to make disciples.  I don't know how to make disciples without also  healing them, do you?   Furthermore, Jesus also commanded us to heal the  sick."   My other reply was a confession:  "I'm sort of addicted to  this ministry, because this is where I get to see the Kingdom of God  come in power!  I feel like I get to see God raise the dead almost every  day.  It keeps me going, and I get more than I give."

Nevertheless,  through all these years, I've been saying to the Lord, "There has to be  a way to disciple and heal a lot more people at one time, do it faster,  and get increasingly better results.  If we're preparing for a great  harvest, we're not ready for a massive influx of people.  We need  something better than what we've got.  I don't have any vision for how  it can be done, but raise up some dread champion who does!"

And  when I saw that motto, "The harvest is plentiful – but it's also  broken" I gasped and thought, I wonder if God has answered my prayer.  I  went to the website, FreedomSession.com and watched the brief video.   The author, Ken Dyck, talked about the same dilemma we had faced,  namely, significant church growth with an inundation of broken people,  and not enough people to disciple and heal them.  I was feeling  cautiously optimistic.  My one concern was that we had already developed  an approach to discipleship/healing (The older I get, the more  difficulty I have in separating the two);  I wondered if we would find  compatibility or it would be a very difficult transition.  To my great  joy, I discovered that the Lord had taken the Dycks along a nearly  identical path in training them to disciple and heal the broken as He  had us!  Hand in glove!

We  jumped in with both feet.  We took a dozen or more people to Ken's  Facilitator Training "Boot Camp," I cast the vision for this ministry  all summer, and in the fall we began Freedom Session with over 40  people.  We gather once a week in a classroom, pen in hand, and watch a  teaching DVD by the authors for about 50 minutes.  Then we all grab a  coffee or tea and head for our gender-specific small groups (men with  men, women with women).  Under the guidance of our trained facilitator,  we open our workbooks to share the homework we've done.  The sharing  usually goes deep and fast, and lasting relationships are forged in this  environment.   The course follows a 12 step format (Jesus is  unequivocally the "High Power"), it runs from mid-September to the end  of May, and Graduation Sunday yields an abundant harvest of testimonies  of lives forever changed.  It is so powerful, I can't hold back the  tears.

Just a few closing observations: