The Development of the Life-Healing Program in Churches for the Restoration of God's Image

Young Sam Park

Document Type Article

Abstract

This study is an attempt to introduce a pastoral system called Life-healing to Restore God’s Image. God made man in His image when He created him. The image, however, was broken because of the fall. Even after becoming a new creation by believing in Jesus, many Christians remain the same instead of experiencing the restoration of God’s image. Korean churches have grown in number and emphasize doctrines but face criticism for not exemplifying the life resembling God’s image. In an effort to overcome the criticisms, the researcher biblically analyzes the concept of God’s image and examines the theological resources related to the subject in order to build the theoretical basis. In addition, the researcher introduces as a practical alternative the six steps of training—Emotion, Language, Communication, Relationship, Caring, and Leadership—that were developed through the experiences in the pastoral ministries for twenty years. He witnessed rapid changes in the emotion, or pathos, of the church members when the program was applied to the church ministries. The researcher administered a survey to forty participants who had gone through the training in order to measure the results of clinical trials of the Life-healing system, and he shows the effect and latent potential of Life-healing training in recovering the image of God based on the results of the survey.