Institute of Christian Growth (ICG) History
by William P. Wilson, M.D.

In 1966 I (William P. Wilson, M.D.) became a Christian. As soon as I was discipled and learned how to communicate with God, it became apparent to me that I needed to serve the Lord in some way. One day a medical student came into my office at Duke University Medical Center and asked me to teach him how to integrate his Christian faith into his life and work. I candidly told him I did not know how, but that we would learn how  ̶  together. To begin, we realized we were able to take a limited spiritual history, so we interviewed ten patients with depression, ten patients with severe alcoholism, and ten patients who were dying of cancer. At the same time we researched literature to find out if any one had written on the subject. We found one book that attended to the subject; it was not very illuminating  ̶  we were on our own.

The results of our investigation revealed that five of the people with depression had gross spiritual problems, and none of the alcoholics had ever considered faith as an answer to their problems (no one had ever convinced them it might be a means of healing). We asked the patients dying of cancer if they had hope for the future. The answers, received from five who were not Christians, were that they hoped they were going to heaven, but they were experiencing considerable anxiety.  The five who were Christians told us they were sure they were going to heaven and were without anxiety. We understood, though, that we had only started learning. After my student went to his residency, I concentrated my time learning more about salvation experiences and how to transform lives. This took about ten years.

In the meantime I received a notice from the curriculum committee asking for new course proposals. I decided to submit one called Christianity, Medicine and Psychiatry. I did not expect it to be approved, but surprisingly it was. When I later asked the chairman of the curriculum committee why it was approved he said, “We were not going to stand in God’s way.”  The course was listed in the Medical School catalogue on its next printing.

As we learned more and more about integrating our faith, lecturing at various Christian conferences, we were able to obtain support from several Christian foundations and individuals. We also involved other experts in their fields  ̶  psychiatry, medicine, psychology, and theology  ̶   who presented their views on the integration of their Christian faith into their practices. We had conferences on “Christianity and the Practice of Medicine,” “Christianity and Marriage and Family,” “Christianity, Alcoholism, and Drug Addiction,”  and several others.

Early on, we began to realize God’s healing power is accessed beginning with regeneration (salvation) and then by the application of spiritual interventions. We identified these applications as unconditional love; discipleship; prayer; use of scripture in cognitive-behavioral therapy to help patients transform their thinking; exhortation; the technique of inner healing; and requiem healing. These deal with conflicts that we face. The results of these interventions produced dramatic healing in most of our patients! All of our interventions were empowered by the Holy Spirit.

I applied and taught these interventions for 44 years until I retired in 2010, at the age of 88 years. During this time I trained 108 medical students, 30+ residents, a number of divinity and psychology students, and chaplains in how to utilize their faith counseling patients in their practice.

 William Wilson, MD Bio (with picture)