I well remember from my days in Pentecostalism that when we spoke about [and that when, was often], the Kingdom of heaven we would speak about it in very muscular and dynamic tones.  In that paradigm the kingdom we spoke of and sought to invoke through various incantations was a kingdom of charismatic power in which we could experience healing and exorcism.  But it was described in terms of being now & not yet.   We saw in the healing ministry that the kingdom had come and was advancing but was not yet fully here.  It was this that explained why not everybody was healed.  In this paradigm not everybody was healed but then not everybody was sick .  I am not so sure about that anymore. 

Having now removed myself from such robust environs I remain a steadfast believer in divine healing, although perhaps I have come to think about healing in rather more appropriate terms.  Healing it seems to me has a broader definition than simply remission from physical sickness. The word healing means to make whole.    Moreover, I have observed that the kingdom is now and not then and that it is a place where everybody recognises that they are sick and everybody is being healed and being a healer.   Are we not all in need of healing?  Which of us is not damaged, fractured or fragmented?  We [were] are broken and need[ed] to be made whole. 

Only in the Kingdom of Heaven will we experience sustained wholeness. And the kingdom has indeed come and that the kingdom came with healing in its wings.  The kingdom is now, but it is not to be found in an institution called the church it is to be found in spiritual community which is church.  My observation is that real wholeness can only be experienced in community.  Only community can give the healing love that is essential for health.

Now what is community?

If community is anything at all it is a place of love. And love to quote Robert Greenleaf is unlimited liability.   So community is a place in which a group of people demonstrate their own unlimited liability for one another.  It is a place where those who are being healed heal one another.

It is the place we call home. And what is home?  Well as Robert Frost said in his poem The Death of the Hired Man   in a conversation between the farmer and his wife about a shiftless hired man, Silas, who has come back to their place to die. The farmer is irritated about this because Silas was lured away from his farm in the middle of the last haying season. The wife says that theirs is the only home he has. They are then drawn into a discussion of what home is. The husband gives his view:

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, the have to take you in.
The wife sees it differently. What is home? She says, 
I should have called it something you somehow t haven t to deserve.

That is community and as we continue to journey together into the depths of Christ I find myself being more and more drawn by the Lord to establish The Grace Project as home as a place where people haven t to deserve.    Whether here in London or in Brazil or Finland or where-so-ever the Lord would have us plant homes in the future that their hallmark would be that those who settle there haven t to deserve.   That they may be places where people are accepted regardless of their imperfections.   And that having found themselves at home they might be cared for by servant-leaders; people builders not people users. 

This is where must place our emphasis nurturing servant leaders, and having loved these men and women to wholeness, because they are themselves servants first and leaders second they will prove to be resonant and not toxic leaders, people who will cause others to become healthier, to grow as persons and to themselves become servants.  This is our goal. This is where we are headed re headed home, to the place where we will discover heaven on earth .

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