Faith, healing

ST. IGNATIUS -- Tim Browne is an orthopedic surgeon. His wife, Julie, is an X-Ray technician and medical assistant. Trained in western medicine, both are profoundly dedicated to a different form of healing, one available to everyone despite income levels or insurance or the availability of specialists. Tim and Julie Browne believe in healing through prayer.
“There’s a real limitation to what you can do in medicine,” Tim Browne said. “What we saw was that God can do miraculous things through prayer.”
The Brownes are no stranger to ministry. Together with their sons, they spent eight years touring the world as missionaries. When their boys, now ranging in age from 16 through 20, were old enough for high school, the couple moved to the Mission valley.
Julie said the couple felt called to return to the U.S., to the place they were born and raised. “Tim and I both grew up in Missoula,” Julie said.
But the big-city atmosphere and resistance to Christ’s influence led them to the smaller community in the Flathead.
Before they moved to St. Ignatius, Julie said the family attended a Missoula church where the congregation felt sorry for them, because the couple believed so strongly that the bible is the literal word of God.
Like prophets of the Old Testament, the Brownes noticed something about sharing the healing power of prayer with a sophisticated society: “Healing and spirituality is so much more accepted in other countries,” Julie said.
Tim Browne relates some of the healing he has seen, precipitated solely by prayer. “I’ve seen cancer healed and bones mended, hypertension relieved. People are actually healed instead of just treated.” Tim also mentions people have been healed of depression and mental illness.
The Brownes laugh when asked whether this conflicts with their professions. After all, they make their living treating people through conventional means.
“It’s something I’ve had to wrestle with,” Tim responded. “This is our real passion.”
The Brownes did not initiate the concept of healing rooms, however. In the early 1900’s, a missionary named John G. Lake returned to Spokane from Africa. He began to heal the sick through prayer, and established a center called the Healing Rooms.
During his time in Spokane, there were over 100,000 documented healings. Spokane was declared “The Healthiest City in the World,” according to Tim. Hospitals, he said, were being emptied through the power of prayer.
But after Lake’s death, the Healing Rooms faded. Then, about ten years ago, a couple named Cal and Michele Pierce felt moved to reopen the Healing Rooms. The organization has exploded in the time since to over 650 centers around the world, including 300 in the United States.
“The vision is to have one in every city,” Julie explains.
The Healing Rooms rest on the biblical concept that health is the true nature of man, and that disease is “a result of the fall of man and the powers of darkness,” according to the Rooms brochure.
“I think the scripture is very clear that healing is for now,” said Tim. “God wants us to live in health.”
There is no affiliation with any church, and Christians of all stripes are welcome to participate. “We’re there to support the church,” Julie said, “To co-labor with the church.”
The practice is simple. Attendees seeking prayer arrive at the Rooms, sign in, and fill out a short form about their needs. “It’s like a medical clinic,” the Brownes said of the initial protocol. But unlike a medical clinic, there is no charge to attend the Healing Rooms, and no appointment needs to be made — at all. You just show up, and in you go.
A group of three “prayer ministers” takes your paperwork, prays over it for guidance from the Holy Spirit, and then calls the seeker in to a small room, where the group then prays for the person by laying on hands and through bible verses they feel inspired to read.
“It’s a simple design, and I think that’s why God blesses it,” said Tim.
The entire process is confidential, though there is a warm camaraderie in the waiting room between those seeking prayer and those who do the praying.
Snacks line a table for hungry attendees, and a spirit of gentleness fills the room.
You get the impression everyone here is honest, and open, about their attendance. The feeling is simple acceptance.
Julie said 10 to 12 trained prayer ministers come regularly to pray over those seeking healing.
Interested Christians who feel called to pray over others must attend a weekend training seminar in Spokane, after being recommended by a local pastor, and interviewed by the center’s board of directors.
The St. Ignatius center has 24 prayer conduits trained in the ministry of healing through prayer. The group went, en masse, to a training weekend this past October, Julie said, although some attending had already undergone the formal training.
“There were people praying for a healing room in this valley for three years,” Julie said. “But no one felt called to administer it. Then God piqued our curiosity about it, and it’s been the missing piece of our lives.”
“When Jesus said to his disciples, I anoint you to go lay hands on the sick, I really think that’s a command in our lives,” Tim said.
“Did you know you have both the authority and power to heal people with the laying on of hands,” Tim asks. “It’s not just for the few.”
The Brownes relate a personal tale of healing in their own lives. When their youngest son was conceived, he appeared to be highly hydrocephalic at 16 weeks in utero. The couple was told to go home and consider their options.
“We went home and prayed and prayed,” Julie said. They decided to continue the pregnancy, and “when he was born, he was perfect,” Julie said of her son.
“That was the start of it,” Tim said of their commitment to healing through prayer. “God does answer prayers and God does heal.”
The Healing Rooms of the Mission Valley is open to all interested persons, each week from 3 to 7 p.m. on Friday evenings.
The hours are limited due to the space the center uses, which is donated by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.
“This is such an unbelievable blessing that the Tribe has given us,” Tim said.
Because the center does not charge for prayer, there is no income to cover the cost of renting or paying utilities on a space for practicing the healing. A couple of tribal members who are on the Healing Rooms board secured the location for the group, “and it’s (the Tribes’) generosity that’s allowed us to use it one day a week,” Tim said.
The Healing Rooms are a registered non-profit, and are located at the former Headstart building in St. Ignatius, 301 S. Main St.
Further information can be obtained by calling 406-824-0142, or on the Healing Rooms web, at www.healiingrooms.com