Life in Orlando

I spent a few days in Orlando with a couple of old friends from many years ago and made some new friends at Pine Castle Methodist Church. Terry and Pam Fisher met and married while on the staff at College Hill Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. They have traveled widely to minister in several congregations from coast to coast and now live and minister in Orlando with Blake Lorenz and his team of merry believers in a very Spirit filled church.

Terry had been a cutting edge musician and street minister who was called into the Jesus House Ministry in the beginning of the Jesus Movement in the late Sixties. This was the beginning of what some call the Fourth Great Awakening. Randy Matthews invited Terry to minister at the Jesus House. Randy was the very first person to record a rock and roll style Christian song of that era. He was also a student at the local Christian Bible College, a school that came from the Restoration Movement, a part of the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800's.

I had a great time of ministry with the men at a retreat where we discussed many issues of inner healing, knowing Christ as both Savior and Healer as well as claiming our new identity in Christ as adopted Eldest Sons. That group really knows how to worship and pray.

The need for emotional healing is great but there are few places it is being carried out. Some twenty years ago many churches and healing centers promoted inner healing in addition to physical healing. But many pastors are evidently scared of drawing too many distressed people if they provide prayer and counseling.

At Pine Castle I experienced a confluence of the past and the present need. It was in the Jesus Movement that I first heard about inner healing and began to study how prayer fit into counseling. Here I was some 30 years later teaching men how to do what I learned back then. The Bible never goes out of style.