Summary of activities: (bypass summary and move straight down to vision for OSL)

I retired from my active parish ministry on January 15 after 39 years as a parish priest, 29 of those years in my present parish of St. Stephen's Saskatoon in order to spend more time as the North American Director of OSL. From my induction in June until my retirement in January I had to gear my OSL activities around my parish ministry. Most of my work other then what is mentioned below was done through e-mail correspondence and telephone calls. That being said in and around my parish duties and responsibilities I was actively involved in the following OSL ministries and activities.

Near the end of July of 2004 I was invited to lead a healing workshop in a rural parish at their annual parish family camp in Saskatchewan, Canada. It was an interesting and challenging venue in which to present a workshop on healing. The response to the workshop was extremely favorable.

In mid August, Betty and drove to Winnipeg to take part in a healing service and to hear a presentation and teaching by the Rev. Derek Lightbourne, former Warden for the OSL in New Zealand. We had an opportunity to meet with Derek to plan a prospective OSL tour of New Zealand that was supposed to take place after our visit to the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Australia. An attempt was also made to arrange a similar tour in Australia. However this did not work out because our time in New Zealand and Australia did not seem to be convenient for the OSL in both countries.

In mid October the Saskatoon and Humboldt chapters hosted the visit of the Rev. Anne Goodwin, Regional Director of Manitoba (Region 10) for a two-day workshop in the Saskatchewan city of Humboldt. Anne was also the preacher at St. Stephen's, Saskatoon on the Sunday St. Luke's day healing service.

At the end of October I left for Lakefield, Ontario where I lead a three-day healing mission for the Lakefield chapter and area. I also was guest preacher at the Sunday healing service at St. John the Baptist Anglican Church in Lakefield. Following the Lakefield Mission I flew to San Antonio for our November OSL Board Meetings. After the Board meetings I stayed behind in San Antonio to meet with the OSL staff in order to become more familiar with the Office and resource Center routines. During my time there I had the opportunity to meet socially at the Synod Office of the Diocese of West Texas with some of the local OSL people providing me with an occasion to meet people one on one. I also had the opportunity to visit a regular chapter meeting at the Methodist Church in San Antonio. While in San Antonio I also met with the organizers of the 2006 Annual conference.

My parish ministry ended on January 15, and on January 16 I flew to San Diego to attend a winter OSL Board meeting. While in San Diego I was given the opportunity of seeing some of the area as well as being able to take in some whale watching, an activity not common for a Prairie boy. On January 21st Barbara McBride and I flew to Tampa, Florida to attend the annual board meeting of the SPC at the Dayspring Episcopal Conference Center. After the SPC meetings were over, Ralph Heller met me at the Center and we drove to Lake Yale to see the facility for the 2005 Conference. It was during this visit that I had the opportunity and privilege of meeting Al Durrance for the first time.

From February 26 to March 20 Betty and I were on tour in the South Pacific.

After returning from the South Pacific, at the end of March, I flew to Manitoba for a mini visit of Region 10. Unfortunately this had to be cut short because of the brief amount of time that was available to plan for this event. This tour was to be held later in the Spring but in order to accommodate my visit to Region 11, I requested that we change this tour to another time and the time chosen did not give the Regional Director and the OSL group in Manitoba a sufficient amount of time to plan and to advertise my visit. It is our intention that I make another trip to Manitoba in order to visit some of the other areas of the Region. While in Winnipeg we had a meeting with the Anglican Bishop of Rupert's Land who was concerned about requests being made to him from OSL members re anointing with holy oil. This is situation that has come up more than once in other Regions and areas. Some denominations allow lay people to anoint with oil whereas the Anglican, Episcopal and R.C. churches sometimes do under certain circumstances but most times do not. I suggested to the bishop that he might explore the possibility of adopting a licensing approach similar to the approach taken by Anglican and Episcopal churches towards other lay ministries. During this visit I conducted a healing workshop on the Saturday and a healing service and teaching on the Sunday evening. The next day we drove to the town of Carmen to talk to the local Anglican priest about the OSL and the possibility of a chapter developing in this area. From Carmen we went on to the town of Morden to conduct a healing service and to hold an OSL induction.

In mid April, Betty and I drove to Southern Saskatchewan where I inducted a new chaplain for the OSL chapter in the city of Moose Jaw and then on to the city of Weyburn to lead a workshop and talk about OSL with the hopes that a new chapter might start in this area. Moose Jaw is an active chapter and there is definitely an interest in the healing ministry and OSL in the Weyburn area.

On April 22, I flew to Duluth, Minnesota to begin a two and one half week tour of Region 11 with Barbara Pursey. Barbara was the first of the regional directors to accept my request to spend more time in the regions. I believe that what Barbara did with the help of people all over the region was to set a helpful model that could be used in one way or the other in other regions. During this tour we drove over 2000 miles, visited eight centers in five States in which we conducted major or mini missions, held workshops, talked with clergy, bishops and church leaders, lay people, visited chapters and introduced OSL to people who were unfamiliar with our work. The response to this tour and approach has been positive and for me extremely helpful. I feel that I have real sense of what Region 11 is like and I can now put faces and names on people from that area.

On May 26 I meet with our Canadian legal advisor to complete the process of incorporation of OSL in Canada.

The more I involve myself in the work of the Order the more it is becoming clear to me that we have to look at what we are doing and how we are doing it. It is obvious that the Order of St. Luke does not have a monopoly on the healing ministry. When the Order was conceived in the 1930's it was John Gaynor Banks' dream that the ministry of such an organization would be to help the Church in all denominations recover and offer the healing ministry as an integral and central part of its total ministry for it was evident to Banks that his own denomination as well as other denominations had lost or had ignored the Gospel mandate 'to heal the sick.' Today, both with and without the help of OSL healing services and healing prayer have become an important part of the ministry of many parishes and congregations. I have been asked the question, since we have a healing ministry in our church what does the OSL have to offer that we don't already have and what can the OSL help us do that we are not already doing? This is a profound question that is challenging and for which we need to struggle to find an answer. What is it that is unique about the ministry of OSL and what does it have to offer to today's church? The posing of the question can mean one of two things. First that our mandate has been fulfilled and we no longer need to exist, second that the Lord is calling the OSL to a new work and ministry in the 21st century or third are we being called to do both? I believe that our mandate is still valid because although many churches do have healing ministries there are still churches that do not and clergy who do not understand what healing ministry and healing prayer is all about. One of the ways we might continue to help fulfill our original mandate in areas where it needs to be fulfilled is to be pro-active in presenting the need for a healing ministry in every congregation by distributing materials on the Christian Healing Ministry and by offering to be a training resource to show clergy and their congregations how they might offer this ministry as an outreach not only to the people of their congregation but to the community in which they live. Also in the case of the OSL to present the truth that a strong chapter of OSL practicing and teaching the healing ministry can not only be a resource for health and wholeness in a congregation but can serve as an evangelistic tool for church growth. It has been proven to be true that people are attracted to congregations who offer the ministry of healing and reconciliation to the community in which they live. To do this effectively we may have to take a second look at everything we are doing to see whether or not what we are doing is appropriate and helpful for the new age in which we live. Therefore in order to continue to fulfill our original mandate to introduce the healing ministry within the church where that is necessary we may need to learn how to be more creative in what we do and be willing to step out in faith and risk doing new things or doing the things we have been doing in a new way. In order to respond to what new thing God might be calling us to do in this new age in which we live we need to begin by prayerfully asking for God's guidance and direction as to what other things we are being called to do for today's church in today's world. If we refuse to allow God to change us and to guide us into new things we will not survive and do not deserve to survive. Maybe we need to see whether or not we have become too comfortable with a status quo approach to what we do because that is always a dangerous position to be in for any Christian ministry. One thing that has certainly become evident to me as I tour and speak with OSL members and others is that there is definitely more work needed in the area of teaching and training people for ministry. The response to the "Going Deeper" series has provided evidence of this need. People are hungry to learn about Jesus and his Gospel and to experience the power of the Gospel in their lives. Up until "Going Deeper" the only resource for training we had to help people grow in their healing ministries and experience the power of the Gospel was the initial membership Bible study. After the completion of the initial Bible Studies the question could be and was asked, 'where do we go from here?' Now we can at least offer the Going Deeper series. Another way to respond to this need is to become familiar with the ministry the Schools of Pastoral Care and then to work more closely with the Schools to utilize the teaching programs that they have to offer that will help our membership to grow in their faith and ministry.

Related to the area of education, in late November or early December of 2004, I received an unsolicited Christmas present from the Order of St. Luke in Australia. The present consisted of 2 excellent OSL books written by OSL leaders in Australia. The first is a series of 30 Bible Studies on the healing ministry of Jesus written by Bishop Owen Dowling, former Anglican Bishop of Canberra. It takes a different approach to our initial Bible studies and is an effective Bible study book on the healing ministry that could be used by individuals as well as by chapters for study and training. The other book is a Handbook on Christian healing written by the Rev. Harold Taylor, a Uniting Church minister in Melbourne, Australia and Development Officer for the Order of St. Luke. This book is written from an OSL perspective and presents the healing ministry in a way that is both Biblical and balanced in its treatment of many of the issues involved in the healing ministry today. It has been designed as a text book in healing for members of the Order of St. Luke, but would be helpful for anyone interested and involved in the healing ministry. When I saw and read these books I realized that they as they have been a valuable teaching resource for the OSL in Australia, New Zealand in the South Pacific they could be an equally valuable teaching resource for the OSL in North America. The problem however, is that to date these books are not available in North America. I felt so strongly about the importance and the education value of these books that I wanted to do what I could as the North American Director to make them available to our membership here. In order to help us make that possible I have been in conversation with a Christian publisher in St. Paul, Minnesota who after reading the books has also seen the value of them as a balanced and Biblical presentation of the healing ministry as the OSL understands and presents it. As a part of the preliminary work he has obtained the copyright permission from the authors to print both of these books and make them available to the members of Order of St. Luke in North America. Because this publisher is convinced as to the value of these books and is sympathetic to the work and ministry of the OSL he has offered to do the work of publishing as a gift and receiving no profit from the sale of the books and to turn the rights to the books over to the OSL. The obligation of the OSL would be to guarantee the purchase of 500 copies of the first book, from which we would receive the profit through sales. But in order to do this we must find as seed money $5000 in order to begin the publication of the first book, "Channels of Healing." If you feel you would like to help see this ministry come about and would like to make a donation towards the $5000 please speak to me.

Another area that I feel is so important at this time in our history is that we work very had to help our members feel that they belong to an organization that has a face and cares. One of my goals is to continue what Don Baustian began which is to make as many contacts with the general membership of the Order as possible. My recent tour of Region 11 proved to me, to Barbara Pursey and to the members of Region 11 how important that is. I don't know how many times people said to either me or Barbara how much they appreciated this visit and the opportunity to for us to meet at such a personal level. Leaders need to meet people where they live, work and have their being and by doing that people feel that who they are and what they do is important. I would truly like to be able to do similar visits in all OSL Regions. I know that many of the Regional Directors would not be able to give the time to this that Barbara so willing gave, but a process could be set up where chapter members could be involved in helping me get from one area to another within each region.

A goal that I believe to be so important to the growth of the Order in North America is the setting up of a Canadian OSL identity. To date with the help of our Canadian legal advisor, the Order of St. Luke, the Physician has been incorporated in Canada in both official languages. In order to incorporate we had to produce our own unique set of by-laws, which we based on the by-laws of the North American Order but with a Canadian flavor to satisfy the legal requirements of Canada. Also due to the willingness and vision of a member of the OSL in Montreal, the Order of St. Luke Bible Study is now available in the French language and this small group of French Canadian OSLers are working at translating other OSL materials. A similar project is underway in the US for Spanish speaking OSL members. This work is so important to the mission of OSL because it is difficult to attract non-English people to an organization that only caters to an English speaking population. In order to publicize the Order in Canada and in the United States in languages other than English means that we will have to take a different approach to how we operate and how we present ourselves and the work that we do. Another goal to work at is to find a way to make it possible for Canadian OSL members to be able to pay their memberships to and receive membership packets from a Canadian address. This I believe will help the Canadian members become stronger partners within our North American Organization.

I would also like to see the Order begin to explore ways of becoming more involved with the Ministry of Parish Nursing which I believe is an effective and important part of the Church's healing ministry in a congregational setting. The basic principles and mandate of parish nursing is similar to that of the OSL. In an attempt to seek God's guidance for the Order in the 21st century one of the areas we might explore is a closer relationship with this ministry to see how we might support and help one another to bring God's healing love into the lives of God's hurting people. Associated with this is to be more deliberate in finding ways to help the health professionals to see what we have to offer as being an important and necessary tool in restoring people to health and wholeness.

Finally two things that I feel strongly about that I believe OSL can and should explore are first, how we might help play a role in the healing of our clergy. OSL with the help of SPC could become a resource in the area of developing opportunities for clergy self care and healing seminars. It has become evident to me in my ministry that one area that is often ignored in the church is the area of the healing of the clergy. Many clergy are not good at self-care and the parishes and congregations whom they serve are not good at looking after their clergy and recognizing when their clergy are in a state of distress. The laity of the church might be surprised at the number of the clergy ministering in congregations who are walking around wounded, hurting and abused with no place to go to find healing. Thus I wonder if one of the roles of the Order of St. Luke and SPC in the 21st century is to find ways of providing a healing ministry for clergy possibly through healing seminars and retreats.

The second area that needs to experience the healing touch of our Lord in the 21st century is the church. From its beginning and throughout its history the church has experienced tensions and conflicts from without and from within that have wounded and divided the Body of Christ. In John's Gospel our Lord's Prayer for the church is that we might be one just he and the Father are one. One of the strengths of OSL is that we are Christ centered, Biblically orientated, and sacramentally grounded. With that as our strength the question that the Lord has put upon my heart is has God given us some healing gifts to use to bring healing to the church and to people who have been wounded by the church? I am not naive enough to think that this task will be easy but I am hopeful enough to believe that as a healing Order we can try to help find and provide a pathway for healing that will allow people to feel the healing presence of Christ within their midst. How we might go about providing a healing ministry for a church that is hurting and broken I don't know, but I believe that God does know and what God expects from us is to listen to him so we might find the healing and hope that is only His gift to give.

My question to you the membership the OSL and I will include the SPC is that with the strengths that we have together should we be trying to become a healing presence within and for a hurting Church, for its people and its clergy? If you answer yes to that question then it is important and necessary that as a healing Order we focus on Jesus who is our Saviour and healer and who is the only one who can bring to us wholeness and healing.

About all of these things what we all need to do is to pray, and pray and continue to pray that God will use us and the OSL to accomplish whatever purposes, work and ministry that He has for us today and that we will respond, and respond, and continue to respond to his call no matter what that call might be to us individually and to us as the Order of St. Luke in North America. May our Healing Lord bless us all and the work he has given for us to do.
Larry Mitchell