Without education, HIV/AIDS will continue to spread. For too long, HIV/AIDS have been confined to the realms of clinics and hospitals but the epidemic does not respect these sectored boundaries.
We need a more holistic approach which will involve all churches as healing communities.
A true healing community is not a closed one.
It cuts across social class, status and power structures.
The members of a true healing community must move out to identify with people who are on its fringes, inviting the marginalized and oppressed in, enabling them to join their communities with restored relationships.
Often people working in the field of HIV/AIDS get discouraged, especially when they see the brokenness of life all around;
the work is big, the task ahead far greater than anyone can imagine, the results so seemingly few and with different strands of the virus emerging every day.
Working in this field takes up a lot of physical and emotional energy. We might want to give up sometime.
Faith healing and spiritual cures have always been part of the church's ministry.
To many, they smack of magic, of mystical claims of ‘impossible cures’ , deeply foreign to us.
They are sometimes seen as dry fruits of aging churches which have lost contact with the living sources of healing power.
In the mist of this tension, the world’s greatest pandemic, HIV/AIDS, is changing the concept of what the healing ministry of the church can mean.
What is empowerment and how can we empower our centers to heal others?
God’s power proclaimed by Jesus Christ is the rejection of powers of this world and the manifestation of His Grace and love in powerlessness.
God’s healing action in Christ empowers the powerless, it liberates, humanizes and transforms lives.
Empowered by Christ, the church must carry out the mission of combating the forces of this world that exercise a demonic influence on society.
The church is not on the side of power, but of powerlessness, not with the powerful but with the powerless.
The church must challenge all acts that pursue over powering, and support and engage all acts that promote empowering.
The church remains powerful in powerlessness so long as it remains obedient to God’s covenant with humanity through Christ.
Christ empowers us against violence and injustices in our prophetic struggles.
This empowerment is a source of healing, transformation and reconciliation.
We can empower by
Healing experiences whether it is our own or that of someone close to us
Allowing our healing to embrace those closest to us
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