During my time in seminary, I came across a TED talk about a device that would save many lives and change mine.
The device was a mobile infant incubator for places that had neither the funds nor the electricity to have a typical medical incubator. It’s a special type of baby wrap. You warm up the filler of the wrap, put it in the wrap, then wrap it around the baby. It provides the warmth needed to give the baby a better chance at survival.
Ultimately, it became known as the Embrace Warmer. Jane Chen, the TED Talk speaker and co-founder of the company that developed the device, helped bring it to global attention. Since then, the Embrace Warmer has gone on to save countless lives.
The way that the device changed my life was that it brought me to a simple, but profound question:
“Hey, that thing is just a big thing squished into a small thing that can be taken in more places to do more good. So, couldn’t we do the same for the local church… for faith in Jesus Christ… for healing… for everything that we think is supposed to happen when Jesus is around?”
Given the digital-first world in which we live, it became easy to see how a regular church could be “squished” into a phone, a ministry into an app, or a retreat into a podcast, etc.
This idea kept me on a path towards founding the company called: PASTORIA
PASTORIA is what I call The Healing Company. Its mission is to bring about healing within and healing among us all. It does this through the offering of healing activations and healing environments, which can be seen together as healing systems.
· For one bleeding woman in biblical times, it was Jesus’ coattails.
· For one disabled man, it was the pool of water.
· For one child in the crowd, it was five loves and two fish
It is based on the theology that every life is a ministry and every person is a minister. We are all already in ministry, even if we may not all be ordained. What we need are the skills and tools to bring about ministry outcomes that make sense within our context, even if it may not be in the context of a local church.
It is also based on a theology of The Healer’s Journey as an alternative to what we usually see as “the Hero’s Journey.” It presumes Jesus’ central role as a healer, not a warrior of some sort, who creates environments in which things could be on the mend.
My vision for PASTORIA is really a natural extension of the charismatic Christian experiences of my childhood. While I may not share in the typical fundamentalist theology of the charismatic movement, I do believe that God can heal every part of our life, including relationships, finances, careers, the Church, and even whole societies.
It also mirrors the way that my father, an immigrant pastor, exercised a ministry of presence. Yes, he sat down with people in the Pastor’s Office. But he also visited their small businesses, praying with them in the back office. He prayed for the healing of their ailing bodies at revival meetings - healing which took place.
The goal is for PASTORIA to be the reason why so many more people experience the kind of healing that is inherent in the image of God, joining in the ministry of which so many like Jane Chen are a part, whether that is what they call what they do. The work is to come up with those very things in the context of today and tomorrow - big things “squished” into small things to go to more places doing more good, for more people.
Beautiful and inspiring words James. Eager to see all the healing manifestations of PASTORIA across denominations, cultures, and industries.
It’s almost as if we were told something about new wineskins.
Thank you for this perspective, James!