Healing Center International grew out of the healing ministry at Church of the Apostles (Anglican), an Anglican church launched in 1968 by 25 individuals from Truro Church in Fairfax, Va. The history below outlines our growth from this effort.

2016

To keep creating more joyful community, HCI hosted its fourth annual conference, Thriving DC 2015: Healthy Leaders, Healthy Community with Betsy Stalcup and Ed and Marizta Khouri. The Leader Advance focused on Healthy Leaders.  We learned about how co-dependency affects the way we lead, as well as all of our relationships.

This year we focused more intentionally on developing our leaders by providing personal mentorship to all of our network members. We mentored more than 50 leaders in the greater Washington, D.C. area as well as Austin, Tampa and Pakistan.

We also invested hundreds of hours learning to do Immanuel and HeartSync well. We practiced giving and receiving HeartSync with a small group of leaders and are hoping to expand that in the future. We also released our first ever DVD, called Immanuel: Enjoying God’s Presence! 

We ran 40 classes in 20 locations, ultimately serving people from over 50 churches. We partnered with Life Model Works to host a Rare Leadership event in the fall, with keynote speaker Dr. Marcus Warner, co-auther with Jim Wilder of RARE Leadership, joined by Betsy Stalcup, Ph.D. and Bill St. Cyr, Ph.D. to give participants tools to shift mindsets and pursue a new way to see great results in teams, families, communities and beyond. We also celebrated our 3rd annual Christmas Tea, featuring a devotional by David Takle.

721 people participated in one or more HCI classes this year!

2015

HCI hosted its third annual conference, Thriving DC 2015: Intimacy for Everyone - Reviving Our Motivation for Relational Intimacy with Jim Wilder and Ed and Marizta Khouri. The Leader Advance focused on Overcoming Barriers to Intimacy: Narcissism.

The Healing Centers (at Apostles and HCI) ran 32 classes in 17 locations, including Northern Ireland, ultimately serving people from 76 churches. Another new leadership development group began meeting at a home in North Arlington and focused on learning to listen well and journal through Immanuel prayer.

414 people participated in one or more HCI classes this year!

2014

HCI hosted its second annual conference, Thriving DC 2013: Further Up and Further In, which included a Mulitgenerational Community Night and a Leader Advance on Leading from a Place of Rest with Life Model Leaders Ed and Maritza Khouri and David and Jan Takle.

HCI and HCA together ran 28 classes in 10 locations, including the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, serving hundreds of people from 58 churches and a host of denominations: Catholic, Assembly of God, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Bible Church, Anglican, Lutheran, Independent, and Coptic Orthodox, among others.  A new leadership development group began meeting at a home in Falls Church. This group focused on learning to listen well and practiced using the Immanuel and Theophostic approaches to prayer.

320 people participated in one or more Healing Center classes!

2013

HCI hosted its first annual conference, Thriving DC 2013: Find Joy and Peace in a Power-Hungry World, with Life Model Leaders Ed and Maritza Khouri and David and Jan Takle.

That year, we also convened the first HCI leadership development group, which met at Truro Anglican Church. Participants learned about staying relational with difficult people, how to avoid ministry burnout, how to pray for the sick and received a brief introduction to all of HCI's offerings.

2012

Sadly, in early 2012, HCA lost one of its biggest cheerleaders when Mr. Mark Robbins, a lawyer and a senior lay leader of Apostles, died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. Mark believed with Betsy that God had promised the healing center would one day be all over the earth. Mark saw this as a picture of a dandelion being blown by the wind. He was helping HCA flesh out the dream of having a retreat center in the metro DC area where leaders from all over the world could experientially encounter God, receive healing, begin to fully mature and take their newfound health and wholeness back to their own flock. A lawyer by training Mark was also doing the preliminary work to charter a new non-profit, Healing Center international.

When Apostles lost its church property in early 2012, HCA expanded to more sites including Barcroft Bible Church (Fairfax), McLean Presbyterian (McLean), Winchester Anglican (Winchester), Northern Virginia House of Prayer (NOVAHOP, Fairfax), Whole Word Fellowship (Oakton), the newly rented office space for Apostles (now COAA, old town Fairfax), and homes throughout Fairfax County. In 2012, HCA held its first course in the public square, offering the Facing Life’s Losses workshop at Fairfax City Library for about a dozen participants over a three-week period. Almost 150 individuals received ministry from HCA this year.

HCA was also able to work with the Rev. Harry Zeiders, who guided the ministry's strategic planning efforts, co-taught workshops and initiated work with Scott Ward (owning partner of Gammon & Grange, P.C.) to establish Healing Center International (HCI) as a non-profit charitable ministry on a parallel track with the continued ministry of HCA. Apostles’ senior warden, Dr. Gary French, and rector, the Rev. David Harper, both blessed the initiative to form HCI as a new 501(c)3. Ali Kirby, a young artist, designed HCI’s inaugural logo which was refined by Amy Kress. In December 2012, the Healing Center held its first major fundraising event with a British-styled tea for about 40 guests. Based on the pledges received at the tea and other revenue, the Healing Center was able to develop a budget of over $80,000 for 2013.

HCI saw the launch of its new domain presence on the world wide web, www.GodHealsToday.org.

2010-2011

These years were filled with stories of healing. While attending Global Awakening's Beautiful Ones women's conference, Betsy experienced a dramatic healing from neck injuries sustained from a recent car accident. In fall 2010, Apostles hosted Randy Clark for three days of Healing Crusades where scores of people were miraculously touched and healed. Later that year, the TPM ministry group traveled to Chesapeake, Va. to learn more from Dr. Ed Smith, founder of TPM. it was a busy year for travel, as Betsy and her daughter Sarah returned to Uganda to minister more to the women there. 

The Life Model’s Thriving Recover Your Life program released a new version of Belonging, which helped people tame their cravings and form healthy attachments to God and others.

In 2011, HCA offered its first class outside of Apostles, when it offered Restarting at Church of the Holy Spirit in Leesburg, Va. The Life Model’s Thriving Recover You Life program developed a third module called Forming, which demonstrates how to engage with God through Christian formation so that they develop an intimate relationship with God that changes them from the inside out.

Betsy and Cheryl traveled to the Aquaduct in Chapel Hill, NC for training in the new Belonging module with Ed Khouri, as well as to Morton, Ill. to learn the Immanuel method from Karl Lehman and Jim Wilder.

Betsy also participated in a mission trip to Baltimore with the youth group from Apostles, where the group experienced a new level of healing while praying for people on the street. (A deaf woman prayed for by one of the teenagers suddenly could hear!)

2008-2009

Betsy traveled to Pakistan to train western missionaries in listening skills and to introduce Theophostic Prayer Ministry to the mission community.

By 2008, Miriam Hollenbeck, a pastoral care student at Loyola University interned with Betsy and introduced her to an approach to healthy Christian formation called the Life Model, inspired by the teachings of Dr. Dallas and Mrs. Jane Willard. Cheryl and Betsy pursued in-depth training in the Life Model, journeying from North Carolina to Chicagoland to learn more. The two modules of the Life Model’s Thriving Recover Your Life program at that time were:

1. Restarting, which addressed attachment pain and addictions

2. An earlier version of Belonging, which fostered healthy community life

HCA ran Restarting and an early version of Belonging initially with small focus groups, which in the following year expanded to four classes.

In 2009, Betsy and Cheryl traveled to Uganda to continue training a woman serving and training other women in Theophostic Prayer Ministry.

2005

In 2005, Cheryl Collins came alongside Betsy to serve the emerging Healing Center at Apostles (HCA). Ann Newbold developed a workshop with Betsy, which they entitled Facing Life’s Losses, in response to American culture’s tendency to ignore or dismiss grieving in all its forms. Teaching and equipping people to deal with grief dovetailed naturally with HCA's continued focus on Theophostic Prayer Ministry. “We all began to heal,” reported Betsy.

2004

By late 2004, thanks to James Daffron, Betsy was exposed to Theophostic Prayer Ministry (TPM).  She gathered a core group of five who went through the TPM training together. The group began practicing under the supervision of Pat Williams. Later, Betsy and a group from Apostles, including Margie Harper, attended a conference led by Dr. Ed Smith. This personal interaction with the founder of TPM confirmed the genuine Christian depth of Dr. Smith and the effectiveness of TPM as a means of healing when it is deployed well. The group was thus motivated to refine their TPM skills and to train others.  Soon a roster of TPM facilitators was developed.

2003

In early 2003, the Rev. Hayes Perdue invited Betsy to co-teach a workshop on listening skills. As Betsy prayed that spring, she sensed God calling her to start a "healing center." As she prayed more she heard him saying, “This is bigger than you think.” She also sensed God’s heart for more unity within the body of Christ, reporting, “I didn’t understand exactly what God was saying, but I found it a little frightening.”  Nonetheless, she invited the heads of all Apostles’ healing ministries — Dr. Beth Cuje , Margie Harper, Bob Ragan, Pat Williams — to begin to meet with each other, to cross-train with one another, and to build a culture of honor rather than competition. That was the start.

That summer, 2003, Hayes and Betsy led the Listening for Heaven’s Sake workshop, published by Equipping Ministries International (EMI) in Cincinnati.  They followed up with other EMI curricula, Speaking the Truth in Love, Renewing the Mind, and Confronting Conflict.  These resources provided the basis for wonderful classes but the material focused on learning principles that relied on logical left brain activity, proving to be a challenge, since when in distress, most people's left brain activity comes to a standstill while the emotional right brain kicks into high gear.

1980s-1990s

In 1984, Dr. Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Stalcup became a member of Apostles, joining her future husband Sam Stalcup, who had been part of the congregation since 1978.  In 1986, the Rev. David Harper, who had helped lead the charismatic renewal movement in New Zealand, became the new rector of Apostles.  Through the ’80s and ’90s, Betsy focused her time on earning her Ph.D. at Stanford, as well as her work as a geologist, a high school science teacher and mother of three. In 2000, a new associate rector, the Rev. Hayes Perdue, joined the staff. During this season, Apostles had many different healing and prayer ministries, all led by different people.

1970s

In the 1970s, Apostles was touched by the same incredible outpouring of the Holy Spirit that had already fallen upon churches of all denominations across the United States since the ’60s. People were being slain in the Spirit, the gift of tongues was imparted and lives were transformed. Miraculous healings were not the exception but the expectation of the day. Out of this fertile soil, Apostles continued to grow and thrive through the 1970s and ’80s.

Trainings offered by HCA/HCI have been taken overseas to the nations including:

• Pakistan-Sindh area in the southeast, where we trained scores of people in TPM, from NGO leaders to illiterate nationals

• Poland-Warsaw, where we pioneered the use of Skype for TPM sessions

• Russia-Moscow, where we led the translation of TPM resources into Russian and hosted Ed Smith for a conference

• Uganda-Kampala, where we offered TPM and the Life Model to help many at-risk schoolgirls and adults

Since the early years of the development of HCA, its ministry was accomplished almost entirely by volunteers. Now that HCI has launched, God has continued to provide the majority of the ministry’s needs through donations and class fees. If you feel led to support us, we would love to hear from you.