1) Healing services tend to be large, so there is not time enough to minister to individuals whose ailments require more attention; we see great unmet need for counseling and soaking prayer. Prayer in these services has to be quick and results instant. Only a minority of the people who attend actually end up healed. Millions of Christians suffer from Alzheimer’s, for example, and yet when have you personally seen it healed at a large healing service?

2) The basic rule of theatre is that you cannot bore an audience or you lose their attention. Therefore, the healing minister must be dramatic. Yet most of the major healings that I witness are deep and interior. They are hidden until later. Even when a tumor disappears, which is truly dramatic, it may take ten minutes.

3) There is a temptation for the leader to hype the situation – to exaggerate, to be unreal. John Wimber was very sensitive in combating this human tendency whenever he could. Historically, this desire to show results has led to the fall of many healing evangelists. Take, for example, the most celebrated healer of all during the glory days of the 1950s – William Branham. Among other remarkable gifts, he was able "to read your mail" – even to knowing your name. He was famous for his gifts, but what does the healer do at the times when the gifting is not present? (See the life of Kathryn Kuhlmann, Daughter of Destiny by Jamie Buckingham.) At any rate, when other healing evangelists also appeared and became popular, they were all competing, in a sense, to draw the crowds necessary to support the ministry. To stand out again from the crowd, Branham began to prophesy that God would do more dramatic things than ever before in his ministry. When it was not clear what these supernatural gifts might be, Branham began to come out with dramatic prophecies (that did not come true), such as the sliding of the California coast into the Pacific Ocean. These discrepancies do not always bother gullible believers, but educated Christians soon made the term "faith healer" a term of derision. We have had to deal with this bad reputation all during our ministry.

4) Greed. If the healing evangelist is serious in his study of Jesus’ life, he or she must eventually come to terms with Jesus’ strict warnings not to make money off the healing ministry. Far from heeding these warnings, some healing evangelists preach a wealth gospel that assumes that the preacher’s followers will enjoy financial wealth. Especially among many young people, this creates cynicism, rather than faith, about healing prayer.