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Douglas & Julia Heffernan a short profile of who we are and what we stand for in our Prayer group known now as the Celtic Prayer Centre..

Born in 1955 I was reared in a Roman Catholic family. My father and mother were respected members of their community. I was one of 7 children, four boys and 3 girls. From very early days I had desires after spiritual things. This manifested itself originally in the reading of all types of spiritual literature including the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola , the Pilgrims Progress of John Bunyan and the Book of revelation in the New Testament. In 1972 I met some Christians from a Christian fellowship in Limerick, who were witnessing for the Lord on the streets of Cork. For the first time I heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ clearly and simply. These new Christians were not Protestant or Catholic but called themselves simply ‘Christians’. A catch phrase of theirs at this time was “we are not the only Christians but we want to be Christians only”. It was in this simple atmosphere that I was introduced to the Christian community. During visits to Limerick, in an open house fellowship I experienced the joy of Christian fellowship. In 1972 I also met Julia Lanigan at a bible study organised by Walter Burrell. Right from the first time I saw her I knew she was going to be very important in my life. It was not until December 13^th 1974 that we tied the knot and became united in body and spirit.

Our Early Growth:

In 1978 I met Denis Linehan at a Catholic Charismatic meeting in Ballyphehane. I got to know Denis and his wife Myra and was invited to start a meeting in their house. Over the next 10 years we had some great experiences with God and God tapped us into a mighty move of his Spirit. We met in various houses and in local community centres as was needed. We experienced many supernatural interventions of God and many people experienced supernatural help from the Spirit. We also knew Jim Rice and Jim took us into his house and for many years he has been a father to our group whom we all respect.

We have been blessed by many streams of the body of Christ but the discipleship stream was a great blessing to us. My heart was always for the whole church. Right from my conversion I had received a vision from the scripture and the Spirit of a church made up of all those who believed in a given locality. I never have accepted the division and sectarianism which appears to mark the church in Cork I began to preach this intensely and also to teach the central elements of New Testament church life. To me these are the centrality of Jesus Christ, the centrality of revelation from the word of God. Coupled to these was a desire to see a community of believers not just a gathering of believers on Sunday morning. I formed an opinion that to experience the fullness of Christ it would take a people who were wholly given to the Lord and to each other.

We began to search the scriptures and found that the believers were called Christians / Messianics and that they met together for teaching, fellowship, prayer and for love feasts( A common meal called an Agape). Love feasts became a central aspect of how we worshipped God and these were open feasts where anyone could share, sing or in some other creative way celebrate the love of God in Jesus Christ. To this end my heart burned with the reality of covenant relationship and the need for accountability within such relationships. Within this context people were encouraged to develop deep relations within the church where they could share their hearts in a secure environment and get help from other brothers and sisters in the faith. Discipleship and covenant relationships were central tenets of this early part of my teaching.

Over the years we have moved on many times and have delved into new revelations of the word as they have surfaced via teaching within the local body or via trans-national ministries. Over this period I also experienced the love of God in forgiveness of my sins and in the healing of my body both emotionally and physically. My wife And family have equally experienced the love of God in this way.

Julia’s Ministry:

My wife Julia with others in the fellowship felt a strong urge of the Spirit to develop a social ministry to supplement the spiritual ministry we were involved in. This we pursued by getting involved with a national Pro-Life organisation. This gave us opportunity to reach out to some needy people in our community. We are still very much involved and now run the local office of this charity with some of our members holding positions on the national committee as well. Others within the prayer group are involved in the YMCA , Scripture Union and other para-church organisations.

Julia had major trouble while pregnant with our first child Robert. In 1983 we held a conference in the Quaker Hall and during this conference Julia was rushed into the hospital with a threatened miscarriage. Much prayer was offered and miraculously the doctor said that she had been restored and could go home, he added that “someone up there was rooting for you”. She went on to have further interventions of God all through this pregnancy. Finally my son was born and even though over 10 weeks premature suffered no ill effects and is now a healthy 15 year old with a deep love for God. He serves the Lord through music in our worship team. Many have commented on the anointing on his life when he plays the violin.

My other son Gerald also has experienced the supernatural protection of God both at birth and in subsequent years. When he was three he fell off a split level house and landed on his head, 20 feet below. He was rushed to hospital and diagnosed as having shadows on his brain and they feared severe damage to his neck, which was put in a collar. Then on a Tuesday night, prayer was offered for his healing by the prayer group. Next morning he jumped out of bed totally healed. The doctors took him down and x-rayed him again and found nothing wrong. They released him the same day from the hospital. He has since experienced the supernatural presence of God including seeing angels and twice seeing the Lord Jesus Christ. He has been used by God to bring the church through tough situations and has had many visions of God and heaven.

My daughter Denise is also a trophy of God’s grace, knowing many seasons of mighty anointing of the Spirit and she also has received words of knowledge and prophecy that have brought us into contact with a supernatural God. She also loves the Lord and is involved in the children’s ministry in the church.

I thank God for my wife and children and for their total dedication to the ways of the Spirit. Without them I don’t think I could have made it through the many tough times that God prepared for me to cause a deepening of His work in my life. They have stood with me all through the gossip that has continuously poured out like a flood about my life.

Over the years I have had the privilege of not only seeing my wife’s ministry develop, my children grow in the knowledge of God but I too have experienced the ongoing love of God. One meeting I smelled the fragrance of Jesus as he moved through the group during worship. Another time I experienced the presence of the Father among us in a very tangible way. Since going to Toronto in 1994, I have also experienced a deepening of this holy work of the Spirit.

The Toronto Blessing: www.tacf.org

In 1989 after a beautiful year of close fellowship and a wonderful church holiday things started to go wrong within the eldership. We had embarked for the first time in our church life on an evangelistic campaign. This put an enormous strain on all of us and especially the eldership. I feel very sad that this resulted in over 15 people of the community leaving and later going on to form another prayer group. I felt very disillusioned at the time and contemplated leaving the eldership and the church. In 1991 I retired from the eldership feeling that my vision was no longer central to the path the church was walking. Julia and I were thoroughly disillusioned by 1994.

In 1994 Julia and myself were seriously contemplating leaving the prayer group. I had left the leadership in 1991 when the other two elders felt the church should try a different path and direction. By 1994 we were having difficulty staying with a group which was slowly becoming just another evangelical group. I had stopped attending the meetings but Julia persisted as a deacon within the group. In September we had planned a holiday in Spain when Ramond McCullough, the editor of the Bread Magazine, arrived at our door late one night. He told us all about Toronto and that some of the CFC leaders in Belfast had been really touched by the Spirit. We then decided to go and with the help of some friends got the money together. The Lord really healed Julia from many hurts at this time, hurts she had received within our own group as my wife due to gossip and slander that pursued me. I also was touched but felt little in the way of manifestations. However on arrival home we were in for a surprise.

After returning to Cork not feeling much of anything, I subsequently experienced a new anointing presence that caused many to experience the fresh presence of the Lord Jesus. I began to feel the heart of God for people in a new way and began to experience His love and anointing in an overpowering way. I, over a period of a year experienced the laughing of the Spirit and the crying of the Spirit. I found both of these to be overwhelming experiences that conquered my heart again for Jesus. Since then we have moved into a new supernatural realm with many of the children seeing angels and experiencing visions. Many of the adults also have been touched and released. It has not always been easy as many Christians have turned their back on this move of the Spirit and called it a move of the devil. All I can say that we have never been closer to the Jesus of the bible since tasting of this stream of the Spirit

I was asked in 1994 to become an elder once again and accepted this honour. Since then Dan Day and myself have led the prayer group. We have sought over this period to reach back into our Celtic past to understand where our roots are growing. During this latter period we have developed a working relationship with a couple from Pioneer people in Cobham which has really made an impact on my life and on the prayer group. God has continued to gift us with a beautiful depth in worship, a rich flood of new songs, poems and praise to our Lord Jesus. I give God the praise for this depth of experience and knowledge which has caused us to love the Lord Jesus Christ in ever increasing depths. It has also allowed me to pursue my vision of a church without walls that recognises all members of the Body of Christ. Whether Catholic, Protestant or no name His body is a mystical manifestation that in all its varieties captures the manifold presence of God.

The current strong emphasis in my life is the need for a return to radical prophetic spirituality and to the experience of the work of the Father in the church. I see this in the lives of the early Irish saints and there radical lifestyles. I see God calling people to follow him into a wilderness away from the evangelical fixtures to a new prophetic awaking. The need for reality in the everyday lives of the saints and a safe place to express this reality is the goal of ministry. I am firmly rooted in prophetic prayer and to seeing people experience a new depth in praying through what God wants for the locality in which each prayer group exists. The last thing that moves me to tears is the need to reach our cities and towns and to see transformation of these into safer environments for all people. To do this people will have to lay down their differences and learn to pray prophetically together. Leaders will have to experience a new humility and see their church as a group within the larger church of Jesus in the area.

Your fellow pilgrim in Christ

Douglas Heffernan.