Apostle Dr. Peggy Elliott

IN THE EARLY 80'S

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In the early 80’s, Pastor Carey and I met and became members of a group of pastors who felt impressed by God to bring healing to the body of Christ through racial reconciliation.  We were quite a racially diverse group from throughout the Twin Cities.  Twelve years ago, I left my hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, relocating to Wichita, Kansas to establish an Apostolic Training and Healing Center. Last year, I returned home to do the same.  Upon returning to the Twin Cities, I began looking for a church home and I organized an Apostolic and Prophetic Roundtable, which Pastor Warren Carey attended.  In reconnecting, I felt led to make Tree of Life my home church.

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To lay the foundation for the interview, I will share the definition of inner healing that I use when I train.  Inner healing is allowing Jesus to reveal deep, traumatic hurts that have arrested a person’s spiritual and emotional development, and allowing the comforter, the Holy Spirit, to bring healing.  My prayer is that as you read this article, you would receive the revelation about how it is possible to teach a total congregation about inner healing, by teaching the subject during a Sunday morning service.                   

                               

Q.  I am very aware of inner healing and deliverance ministries as a ministry offered within many suburban churches within the Twin Cities, but this is the first time that I am aware of an urban church implementing inner healing.  Pastor, how did you determine that you wanted the entire congregation to go through inner healing?

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Pastor Carey:  To answer the question is very simple!  Tree of Life Church is twenty-five years old.  Many years ago, I had made the decision that our church leadership, including myself, would go through deliverance training. The training was a blessing and we all experienced some degree of deliverance.  Yet, I knew something was missing.  When you, (Dr. Elliott) became a member of our church, you shared your experience of having over forty years of training individuals and churches in inner healing and deliverance ministry.   Your approach was new to me and yet, I knew it was just what our congregation needed. It took 25 years for God to send someone who had a very similar vision, life experiences, and training, to take our congregation through inner healing.

 

The word of God commands pastor's and churches in Matthew 28:18-20: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, 19 Go and "make" disciples of all nations (tribes and people groups) baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 20 Teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and behold I am with you,  always to the end of the age.

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Instead of a wholehearted obedience to the command of God in what we call the great commission, my experience is that most churches prefer a sophisticated and trendy way to get people to make a commitment to become a member.  Constantly, we as leaders claim and proclaim that our churches and denominations are growing numerically and financially.  We fail to realize or admit that much of the membership increase that we are experiencing is through members from other churches, transferring their membership to existing churches.

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My desire has always been to advance the Kingdom of God by seeing new disciples birthed into the family of God, nurtured and healed.  I wanted to see people discipled, become servants, and then become yielded leaders for God.  The targeted populations that I had a burden for were those who were overlooked in church and never used and people who had been hurt and wounded within God's church.  I wanted to reach people just like me, who too, experienced church hurt.  I knew that God wanted Tree of Life to make an impact on the kingdom of darkness and assist in training new believers to become healthy and spiritually competent, as well as strong. 

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In starting a new work, I quickly found out that many of the people who were being impacted by the good news of the Gospel were very hurt, wounded, and resentful believers, leading families and churches. A lot of these individuals loved God, but I could tell that many were never nurtured or discipled, so, helping Gods precious and valuable people became our only mandate.  In 1992 my wife and I were sent out from our home church to plant a church in the inner-city of South East Minneapolis. We wanted to be excited about being chosen and to serve in this capacity.  But, something wasn’t quite right.

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We were sent with no support, no money, no people, and no particular place to meet!  But God!!   We launched into ministry as sort of a breech birth.  But the Father had other plans for us that we could not even imagine at the time of the sending. Our total trust and dependence had to be on Abba Father, and not man. 

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My wife Nadine and I became instantly acquainted with deep hurt, and feelings of abandonment from the very inception of pastoring, of accepting the call to shepherd.   This is why deliverance and inner healing has been a priority from the very beginning.  We needed both ministries in our own lives.  So, twenty-five years ago, Sunday, June 7th1992, we had our first gathering in the home of one of the founding members of Tree of Life Church, Israel Mae Hill.   God supernaturally healed the wounds we had encounter so many years ago. 

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We eventually moved from meeting in a home to meeting in a community center.  Many who came had never come to a physical church or a church function.  Our outreach was to people who were extremely lost and needing a loving Savior to accept them in their present condition, heal their wounds, and ultimately make them whole.  We didn't call this new group a church yet.  We called it a bible study support group.  We created a contract with friends outside of our ministry who were licensed in counseling and or social work who understood the type of issues people were bound by.  We also provided a stipend for our ministry group facilitators.

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This groups curriculum featured the Christian 12 steps.  We developed topics around the hurt and wounded Christians, toxic beliefs, toxic relationships, traits of a healthy church, understanding shame, and finally the co-dependent Christian. 

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My background is in secondary education/physiology and social work.  We would always put on citywide conferences around the spiritual and emotional health of individuals and the family.  The first of many conferences was attended by social service agency leaders and managers. Many of the speakers came from Hennepin County Child Protection Service, the Department of Mental Health and Adult Protection.  Those conferences were never well attended by church leaders.  We understood that unhealthy individuals make up unhealthy families and churches.  At Tree of Life, we have always felt called to be a type of hospital to the disfranchised in an urban setting. 

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We have been equipped to serve and administer hope, deliverance, and deep inner healing because we have all been broken to pieces! Yet, many of those who needed the healing, would not attend the training.  So, after much prayer and thought, I decided to take the training to them.  I asked Dr. Elliott to take the third Sunday of every month and teach the congregation about inner healing. The first month of this teaching took place four months ago.  Along with the training, Dr. Elliott was to begin offering one-on-one healing sessions with those who voluntarily see the need for healing.  As of today, 97% of our church leadership has not only been trained in understanding inner healing, this same group has set voluntarily received one-on-one sessions! 

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In this triage type of ministry setting God heals and makes whole those who are willing, and He is preparing a people that will respond to the cry of those hurting.  We are so honored to be used to raise, disciple, and send healed, urban missionaries to go out into the world and bring in the lost and dying.

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“Down the middle of the great street of the city, on each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the Nations. “   Revelations 22:2

 

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