Pastor focuses on healing
By DAVID LOWE Staff Writer

PHOTO BY DAVID LOWE Maggie McKinley and her husband, Jay, serve as pastor and youth pastor, respectively at Hands of the Promise Full Gospel Church in Lampasas. Mrs. McKinley said she entered the pastorate following her recovery from serious lung illnesses.

Maggie McKinley doesn't hesitate when she speaks of healing.

The pastor of Hands of the Promise Full Gospel Church, Mrs. McKinley believes God still works through Christians to do the same kind of miracles recorded in Scripture. Believers just need to exercise their spiritual authority over sickness, she said.

"Whatever you read that was happening in the New Testament should be happening now," Mrs. McKinley said.

The author of "Healing by the Word of God," a self-published compilation of Scriptures on healing, Mrs. McKinley also has written "Non-Perishable Healing Truths," a teacher and student manual ready for print. She is completing a third work, titled "Healing is a Legal Matter."

The pastor is basing her current book on Isaiah 53:5 and 1 Peter 2:24. The Old Testament passage, anticipating the coming of Christ, promises, "by His stripes we are healed," and the verse in 1 Peter tells Christians they were healed by Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection.

With those verses in mind, Mrs. McKinley said Christians need to pray and act with a lawyer's outlook to nullify disease.

"When you get saved, there's a 'No trespassing' sign that goes up on your body," she said. "When you get sick, there has been a crime committed, but if we don't know a crime has been committed we won't prosecute it."

A graduate of Speak the Word School of Ministries, Mrs. McKinley often uses metaphors and parables in her sermons and writings to explain spiritual principles.

"I don't try to preach a sophisticated word," she said. "If I can get you to remember one thing, I've been successful."

She developed her passion for healing in October 1987, when she said God delivered her from five lung diseases. At the time, Mrs. McKinley's lungs looked like an emphysema patient's, said her husband, Jay. For two years she had slept sitting up so she could breathe, and coughing fits sometimes lasted as long as 20 minutes, he added.

After accepting Christ, Mrs. McKinley said she was completely healed and has not needed antibiotics in 20 years. She also left her life of drinking, drugs and partying.

"When she preaches healing, she teaches it with a passion that just teaches faith," said her husband.

For six years, Mrs. McKinley has been leading a weekly prayer and healing session, which has drawn as many as 60 people on occasion. The pastor also has traveled as far as Temple to pray for the sick at their homes.

Her ministry hasn't come without opposition, though. After two and a half years leading Hands of the Promise, Mrs. McKinley said she still receives one or two calls per day from people telling her women should not serve as pastors and that Scripture commands women to be silent while in church.

She counters: "The Bible says there is neither male nor female in the kingdom of God," and Mrs. McKinley feels no need to "prove" herself as a minister.

"God proves me," she said. "God proves my ministry by miracles, signs and wonders."

Mrs. McKinley said her husband, youth pastor at Hands of the Promise, encouraged her when she felt God's call to enter the ministry. The couple share counseling duties at the church, as McKinley prays with members who request consultation with a male pastor.

"If a man knows who they are in Christ, they don't have to worry about who women are in Christ," Mrs. McKinley said.

Both as a pastor and an author, she knows her calling.

"Healing is my passion," she said. "I'm a pastor, and I have a pastor's heart."