Prayer power: Oceanside's Christian Healing Center offers balm to the hurting

The Rev. Anthony Baron knows the image some people hold of faith-healers. Hucksters. Charlatans. Modern-day versions of Elmer Gantry. Baron himself used to be a skeptic. He believed that any positive effects from faith-healing probably could be explained as psychosomatic.

Today, he is the executive director of the Christian Healing Center, a nonprofit group in Oceanside that counts a registered nurse and psychologist among its board members.

"This is a very sacred responsibility," Baron said. "Our calling is prayer, and we leave the rest to God."

There are no flamboyant theatrics at the center, no cries of "Heal!" and definitely no desperate pleas for money at the end of it all. The volunteer counselors and pastors at the center do their work quietly, in private rooms and occasionally in a sedate church.

People are not told they have been healed and to throw away their churches. Rather, they are told to first see a doctor to find out just what is wrong with them and then to visit a doctor again if they believe they have been healed by prayer.

Barton is convinced people can be healed by prayer, although he is no closer to understanding how or why it works.

"Healing is a mystery," said the Episcopal priest. "There's a majesty to it. You see the kingdom of heaven coming here to earth."

While faith-healing isn't replacing any health-care plans just yet, it is being studied by top universities, sometimes with funding from federal tax dollars, and countless people attend regular healing services at churches locally and nationally.

Oceanside's Christian Healing Center, a ministry of St. Anne's Episcopal Church on the same block, opened about two years ago in a house that had most recently been used as a medical office. The waiting room still looks like a living room, and the meeting areas are comfortable and homey places where clients meet with either a volunteer counselor, Baron, or fellow minister Bob Jepsen, director of the center.

Clients come for physical healing, to discuss questions about their own spiritual direction or to seek pastoral counseling.

"We had one man who came for a prayer healing," Jepsen recalled. "He had tennis elbow for many years, and since he received prayer, he's had no pain."

In a more dramatic example, Baron said he prayed for a woman who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

"While we were praying, we heard a pop," Baron said, describing a sound he heard coming from the woman's head. "Two months ago we got a letter from her saying her doctor says it's not there anymore."

Spiritual renewal

Before becoming a priest six years ago, Baron had a successful career as a psychologist and specialized in work-related violence. He is the author of "Violence in the Workplace," "Violence in Our Schools, Hospitals and Public Places" and "When Work Equals Life." He still owns the Baron Center, a consulting firm that, among other things, comforts workers victimized by violence and intervenes to stop inappropriate or disruptive behavior.


