There can’t be many funerals that end with the congregation waving flags and throwing confetti as the hearse leaves, but it was a fitting end for our dear and much-loved Ray who has gone to the wedding feast of The Lamb, having wrestled with great faith, fortitude and strength the November 2021 diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. The oncologist was amazed to see the tumour shrinking in 2022, without chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and hospital staff did not expect Ray to survive the prognosis of ten months.
Ray William Scorey was born in Romford, but first came to Norfolk in the 1970s. He became a Christian in 1978, when working as an architect, having experienced something like Heaven in the home of his future father-in-law, a Methodist minister. Not long afterwards, Ray was filled with the Holy Spirit so powerfully he thought he was going to die! From very early on, he heard God’s call to the ministry and trained at Cliff and Moorlands Colleges in the 1980s. Although he described himself as a Baptist Minister, because “they gave him a badge”, he actually served in almost every denomination going.
It was back in 2007 that he and Mike Jones attended Healing Rooms training in Spokane and opened the first Healing Rooms in Norfolk. The first healing they experienced was Joe, who had only gone along to accompany his friend but who decided to accept the offer of ministry for his 10% eyesight. The next day, Joe rang Ray to ask who he should write the cheque to, because the hospital found his eyesight was 90%! Ray had to explain that Healing Rooms is free and the team didn’t even have a bank account.
It was in 2004 that Ray started to get involved with the prophetic, through Prophets Chris Wren James and Alaric Hunt. He developed a way of watching and listening in the Spirit which made his prophesying not just spot on but full of compassion as well as truth. Ray and Ruth set up Norfolk School of Prophets in 2014 and, since then, have encouraged many Healing Rooms teams how to trust their spiritual ears. In Healing Rooms meetings, Ray’s favourite phrase was “Jesus is interceding to the Father all of the time, so what is He saying?” This is the Healing Rooms model in a nutshell.
In 2010, with the inception of the annual Christian event Celebrate Norwich, Ray and the team took Healing Rooms to the streets of the city centre by way of a loaned caravan. Soon after, a monthly mobile Healing Rooms was born and over the years, in addition to beautiful healings, about ninety people have come to know the Lord through this exciting ministry. The caravan was replaced by a motorhome in 2013 and, for a time, Norwich Healing Rooms also brought along their own motorhome to swell this street ministry.
In 2016 Ray and wife Ruth became Regional Directors for the East of England, holding regional days in Harlow. There, in addition to the prophetic, Ray encouraged all teams to become better acquainted with the ministry of inner healing, having experienced the benefits of Charles and Mary Clarke’s ministry in his own life. His was a life often plagued by rejection on all kinds of fronts, but it was inner healing that helped him to be a conqueror and not a victim.
Ray had been taught how to heal the land by one of his church congregants and the motorhome came in very handy for healing the land in the UK, starting with the East Coast and, over the years, covering the whole coast of UK and Eire. In 2017, Ray and Ruth took their motorhome for a mammoth trip through Europe, starting with the Latvian Healing Rooms conference and ending in Malta. In Riga Ray had a prophetic word; he lit twelve matches, planted in Latvian bread, and felt the Lord tell them to plant one match in every country they passed through, each inscribed with 2 Chronicles 7:14; healing the land. At the 2018 European Healing Rooms conference in Ukraine, it was very exciting to hear of new Healing Rooms popping up in countries where these matches had been buried.
By 2019 Kings Lynn opened its own Celebrate event and, with the addition of offering prophetic heavenly destiny words, more people came to know Christ as their saviour and healer. That same year Ray and Ruth became National Directors for Healing Rooms Scotland, relinquishing their roles as Regional Directors.
Ray’s big vision was for revival to stream down from Scotland and into the rest of the UK. Surely, the time is very near and we strain towards the prize and say “Come, Lord Jesus. Come!”