When the pain of past hurts is weighing a person down, the Church invites the faithful to give their burdens to Christ and to experience true freedom. The ministry of Unbound provides a pathway for this type of healing.

St. Lawrence Parish in Tampa is offering Unbound for the first time ever this month. Amy Palumbo is leading the ministry there.

“Many times we go to confession and receive absolution but the root cause, the reason we acted out remains. This ministry is designed to bring awareness, usually a past hurt often from childhood, that causes us to hold on to negative thoughts and repeat negative behaviors,” said Palumbo, explaining why St. Lawrence is offering this new ministry to their parishioners.

Participants attend a session with a leader and an intercessor who silently invoke the help of the Holy Spirit. The leader listens to the participant and leads him or her through the five Gospel keys: Forgiveness, Repentance, Renunciation, Authority and Command. This process ends with a prayer of “The Father’s Blessing.”

Michele Laurain introduced Unbound to her parish, St. Timothy’s in Lutz two years ago.

“Unbound is considered a non-confrontational prayer model that delivers people from places of bondage,” Laurain said. “Places of bondage are places where people are stuck in fear or unforgiveness or if they have suffered a great loss and are having a hard time getting through that, as well as suffering from anger, anxiety and resentment.”

The ministry focuses on the needs of the person and God’s love for them. Prayer sessions are led by the Holy Spirit according to Laurain and are scheduled for two hours at a time, so the meetings never feel rushed.

“It is not meant for a person to keep coming back for prayer session after prayer session,” Laurain said. “The prayer teams prays over a person and teaches the person to pray because the power is not in the team, the power is in the Holy Spirit that heals.”

According to Palumbo, the goal of this ministry is to heal people’s spiritual wounds and deliver them from whatever is causing them to feel a sense of brokenness.

“All those spirits that oppose the Holy Spirit, like anger and fear, that’s what they are delivered from,” Palumbo said. “It’s the day-to-day stuff like bitterness, resentment, and jealousy.”

Palumbo describes Unbound coming to St. Lawrence as “an act of God.” 

“We are just in awe of how the Lord worked through everyone,” Palumbo said.

Unbound is a healing ministry that has been around for 40 years. The Unbound ministry team is made up of many people from a variety of parishes in the Diocese of St. Petersburg and are welcoming anyone who would like to partake in this prayerful healing. The ministry leaders go through rigorous training to understand the prayer model and how to facilitate it. To learn more, visit St. Lawrence Parish.

Article by Lauren Pieper