Ray was minister, prophet, healer and architect
Baptist minister, Norfolk Healing Rooms and School of Prophets founder and church architect, Rev Ray Scorey, has died at the age of 79. Wife Ruth pays tribute to a remarkable man.
Ray William Scorey was born in Romford, his mother and father, Joan and Harry, marrying young amidst the hubbub of World War II. Ray was named after the famous Welsh-American movie star Ray Milland and was never registered as Raymond; just Ray. It is said that, as a baby, he, his mum and his older sister Ann were rescued from an exploding bomb by the local vicar who pushed them all, pram included, into a passageway opposite the church and out of danger.
Two more brothers, Michael and Alan, and a sister, Michline, were born and the Scorey children all enjoyed the freedoms that the nearby countryside offered. As a small boy, Ray washed milk bottles for the local farmer and assisted with milk deliveries made by horse and cart and later he enjoyed shooting rabbits with friends.
He and his school friends were fascinated by cars and tinkered together on old bangers, which were the only vehicles they could afford. As a teenager, he drove a dumper truck for pocket money and learnt quickly how to reverse down very narrow passageways to get a tip from the customer; driving skills that became very handy later on for the motorhome Healing Rooms.
With dyslexia being unheard of then, he was not considered very promising at school. When he asked his northern PE teacher if he thought Ray would pass his GCEs, the man replied [in a broad Yorkshire accent] “Pass GCE? You’ll not pass lamppost”. Once, a teacher punished Ray for some misdemeanour by making him stand up and sing. Ray sang beautifully and, when the teacher heard him, he entered him for the Chase Cross school inter-House competition which Ray won for his house. But on the whole, Ray would look out of the classroom windows and wonder what the world had to offer him.
In the 1960s, aged 16, Ray was invited to join a rock and roll band as a bass guitarist, in the days when The Beatles were just coming to the fore. Ray’s mum was not altogether supportive of this venture, feeling that his education was more important. So Ray would slip out of the bedroom window, without her knowledge and perform to screaming girls, enjoying various gimmicks with the crowds.
Ray left school at 16 not knowing quite what he would become. A teacher had told him he’d never make a public speaker and the school Careers Officer suggested that he was not office material because he didn’t keep a diary. Because his passion was cars, he was sent to be a car mechanic, which he found soul destroying. Lying beneath a chassis, he would watch the trains to London go by and long to be on one of them.
But Ray could draw and fortunately one of the careers team pointed him in the direction of AGIP, an Italian petroleum company in the City of London. He began there as an office boy, graduated to switchboard, then parking Alfa Romeos for company directors, until his artistic skills were noticed and he started to draw up plans for petrol stations.
Companies supported him to attend day-release architectural training at North London Polytechnic over the next ten years and he went on to work with major commercial architectural firms such as Frederick Gibberd and Carl Fisher. He designed a travelator at Heathrow, was involved in the design of the new Liverpool Cathedral, known as Paddy’s Wigwam, and Ilford Railway Station. Also the redesign of the country’s chain of Burton’s men’s clothing shops and wherever he went he would make a point of visiting a shopping precinct in Reading or Lenzie, Scotland, or an office building in London’s Liverpool Street, which he had designed, to see how they were holding up. He taught architectural students, saying “I have million pound jobs to deal with here, so you’d better keep up!”
During these years, he bought a beautiful house in Leeds, when mortgages were particularly low, and the proceeds of the sale of this house only a couple of years later enabled the family to spend a year in New Zealand, Ray working as an architect. On their return they lived in Attleborough and Potters Barr, Ray working two jobs as an architect and as a pub landlord, rather uncharacteristically for a gentle man with no taste for alcohol.
But his life was turned upside down by the presence of Heaven in the home of Norman and Betty Burrows, his parents’-in-law to be and, after hearing the audible voice of God asking him “so Ray, what are you going to do about me?” he went on to be filled with the Holy Spirit, an earth-shaking experience that made him wonder if he was dying, and knew that God was calling him into the ministry.
By this time, he had three children, Jon, Adam and Simon and went on to have two more: James and Joanna. They lived in Basildon for a time, where Ray worked as an a architect with the local council and also with a blind school, after which he left architecture, just six months before his architectural course was to finish, his senior tutor having asked him where his true passion really lay.
In the mid-1980s he spent a theological foundational year at Cliff College, near Chesterfield, where he met fellow architect and prophet Jeff Kitts and wife Liz and also thoroughly enjoyed getting involved with the building plans for Roger and Beryl Hosking’s innovative Christian farm project, Happy Hens, which provided hope for children expelled from school.
He began candidating for Methodism. He was interviewed by a council of 40 Methodist ministers and asked about a David and Goliath situation he’d had to face, to which Ray replied, “This one!” Ray’s charismatic outlook, so in line with Wesley, surprisingly didn’t sway the panel, resulting in a “not yet recommended” decision.
This changed his direction and instead he attended the evangelical Moorlands College in Dorset, where he moved the family for three years. There he learned how to pray with the College Dean, write first-class essays and stimulating sermons, to worship in spirit and truth but also to challenge the existing spiritual narrowings he met there; there was very little teaching on the Holy Spirit or prophecy but Ray was both filled with the Holy Spirit and prophetic, a combination that some people found difficult to handle.
Ray took a course on grief counselling and earned extra money by working for an undertaker, occasionally taking the kids for a drive in the hearse (without the coffin)! He lived by faith for many of those years and told many amazing stories of God’s provision for much needed funds, homes, cars and parking spaces!
He pastored at a couple of churches in South Woodham Ferrers in Essex, including a new house church which he pioneered, before being led back to Norfolk in the 1990s, where he practised in almost every kind of church there is, from Baptist, Anglican, Roman Catholic, New Frontiers and Pentecostal Assemblies of God. He would say that he became a Baptist simply because they gave him a badge.
While he ran churches, he also practised as an architect for many of those years, getting involved with the designs of The Matthew Project in Norwich, the refurbishment of Ormesby and Gorleston Baptist churches and the design of the Kings Centre Gorleston and very many other private jobs. He had many happy years at Aylsham and Ormesby Baptist churches, where he was a minister, before retiring in 2009.
Ray faced more than his fair share of opposition, perfidy and physical, mental and spiritual attack over his 79 years and benefitted from the input of his mentor Glanville Martin, who introduced him to the power of the inner healing ministry of Charles and Mary Clarke. From this he knew for a fact that God could turn ashes into beauty and longed to see others similarly released.
He was introduced to the prophetic by his good friend, Jeff Kitts, in 2004 and, meeting prophets such as Chris Wren James and Alaric Hunt, he became proficient in giving tender and spot-on spiritual words to people who needed encouragement.
In 2007, he and Mike Jones set up Norfolk Healing Rooms together, having trained for a week in Spokane, Washington, USA. Their first healing was Joe, who brought his friend for ministry and decided he would like to take up the offer of prayer for himself as he was due to attend the hospital ophthalmology department for his 10% vision. The day after, he phoned Ray and said “Who do I write the cheque to?” Norfolk Healing Rooms didn’t even have a bank account! The hospital found that his vision had miraculously returned.
The team had a short but successful time ministering healing to the audience of Revelation TV, where they would be as cool as the mysterious cucumber Ray secreted on the desk in front of them as a reminder.
It was Ray and his team who, in 2010, pioneered mobile Healing Rooms on Millennium Plain in the centre of Norwich, using a hired caravan, all part of the annual Christian venture called Celebrate Norwich. The caravan morphed into a Motorhome over the years and Celebrate expanded to King’s Lynn. On both sites the team loved seeing people discover the beauty of Christ and healing of all kinds. For a time Ray and Ruth enjoyed being trustees of Celebrate.
When Ray married Ruth, they set up Norfolk School of Prophets together, along with Revs Rod and Michelle Smith, and went on to lead many a taster session for various Christian groups across the nation. Ray and Ruth also co-directed Norfolk Healing Rooms, having many exciting adventures healing the land across Europe plus the entire coastline of the UK and Eire.
Together they were Regional Directors for Healing Rooms in the East of England and spent the last five years as National Directors for Healing Rooms Scotland. Together they have also been trustees for the charities First Love Global and Healing Streams. More than anything Ray longed to see the dead raised and for Revival to come to Britain.
A number of people prophesied that Ray would write books and he ended up writing three: ‘How To Do Mobile Healing Rooms’, ‘How To Set Up A Prophecy School’ and his biography ‘The Adventures of a maverick: My Journey in my own handwriting’ - all self-published (not available in bookshops).
He was diagnosed with inoperable and untreatable pancreatic cancer in November 2021. Ray explained to the doctors and nurses that he was a man of faith and believed for his healing. The scans soon showed the tumour shrinking and the cancer markers decreasing to levels that suggested he had had chemotherapy, when he had had none.
He carried on and endured for two and half years, well past the expectations of the oncology team. To the end, he remained full of faith, was calm and serene and sang hymns almost to the end. All who surrounded his bed were deeply affected by the sheer peace that pervaded the atmosphere.
He leaves behind wife Ruth, sisters Ann and Michline, brother Alan, his five children Jon, Adam, Simon, James and Joanna and thirteen grandchildren.
A thanksgiving service will be held at Stalham Baptist. Church, at 12 noon in Monday April 22, followed by an after-party in the church’s school room. All are welcome, and no need to wear black. There is no service at the crematorium as we will wave Ray off from Stalham Baptist straight after the service with coloured flags and confetti. After all, he has gone to the wedding feast of The Lamb.
There will be copies of ‘How to set up a Prophecy School’ available at the after party, in exchange for donations to either Healing Rooms England and Wales, First Love Global or Healing Streams.
Please add your own tributes to, or anecdotes about, Ray below.