PrayerLeader OnLine
March 2006
Vol. 3, No. 3

Introduction
Our annual convention is fast approaching. This year's event, once again partnering with Prayer Quake, is held June 14-16 in Mesa, Arizona. The last time we partnered with Prayer Quake, almost 1,400 people registered for the conference. It was a powerful time of meeting God! We hope many of you will be able to come. Try to bring some others with you! We know they will be blessed.

Check out the feature in the right hand column of this newsletter for more information.

Blessings
Jonathan Graf
President

Keynote Speaker: Jackson Senyonga
Kampala, Uganda

This year's event promises to be one of the most powerful, exciting conferences you will ever attend! Prayer Quake features dynamic worship, led by Daniel Brymer, and anointed keynote speakers. The evening sessions feature Henry Blackaby, Jackson Senyonga, and Dutch Sheets.

Plus, you have a choice of more than 40 different workshops, led by such prayer leaders as Cheryl Sacks, Jacquie Tyre, Jon Graf, David and Kim Butts, Sue Curran, and Alvin VanderGriend.

This year event features three luncheons: pastors--Jackson Senyonga; Businesspeople--Henry Blackaby; prayer leaders-- Sue Curran.

Register by May 1st and save!

Cost: CPLN Member/Arizona Resident $80; nonmember or resident $100 After May 1st, the price goes up to $99/$125

It Seems to Me . . .

. . . we use inaccurate labels for the many meetings we attend.

When was the last time you were asked to confer at a conference?

con•fer:  to talk with somebody in order to compare opinions or make a decision

Did you ever really work at a workshop?

work•shop: a group of people working on a creative project, discussing a topic, or studying a subject

How much discussion went on at the last seminar you attended?

sem•i•nar: a single session or short, often one-day meeting devoted to presentations on and discussion of a particular topic, usually at an advanced or professional level

Never?
No?
None?

Conference. Workshop. Seminar. Whether complimentary or expensive, nearby or far away, we are too often considered the audience; sit, listen, take notes, buy the tape.

Few advanced or professional level speakers consider it vital to involve us in the process. Their outline is too important. Our role in explaining and expressing the voice of God is undervalued.

What could happen if the mindset of our teachers changed from informational to transformational? What if Christian leaders, taking a cue from a recent article in the Harvard Business review, recognized the power of “peer-to-peer learning” and included us in the learning process?

Didn’t the Apostle Paul admonish us to be transformed (not informed) by the renewing of our mind? Knowledge is a means to an end. The notes we take at a conference or workshop or seminar are not the end in themselves.

Knowledge, both scriptural and practical, is essential and doctrine is foundational to our understanding of God’s Word. But interaction through questioning and discussing is a God-designed means for application and implementation.

It seems to me most of us have never actually been at a true conference or participated in a real workshop or contributed to a seminar. What a blast that would be!

Phil

Definitions from: Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Watch Your Prayer Protocol

Are Prayer Leaders Their Own Worst Enemies?

By Jonathan Graf

I have recently been struck by the fact that those who are most passionate about something, often find it hard to help others get involved with what they are so passionate about. The same can be true for many of our network members. You are passionate about prayer. You want to see prayer grow in your church. You want to see a dynamic prayer meeting established in your church. But I wonder how many of us are our own worse enemies where prayer growth is concerned.

More and more I am hearing from pastors who believe one of the problems with growing prayer in their churches is the people most passionate about prayer--possibly even the prayer team. As prayer leaders we would be aghast to learn that we might be a hindrance to prayer in our church! But we sometimes are. How?

Often, those of us who are zealots about prayer cannot relate practically. We love prayer, but our views of what to shoot for are sometimes impractical. Let me give some examples.

I was recently in a church where the pastor hesitated to promote the prayer gathering (it met Wednesday nights along with several other functions for adults that evening). This was not due to his fear of promoting one thing over another that night. It had more to do with the focus and format of the meeting. The prayer meeting was characterized by a few people praying very long prayers. The result was that they intimidated other people. The pastor did not want to encourage people to attend a meeting where they would feel they couldn’t participate--and perhaps where they might actually be stunted in their prayer growth because of that intimidation.

Following a session I taught in that church on discovering your prayer personality, a women came up to me and told me that she went to the prayer meeting but never prayed. Why?  “Because,” she told me, “I cannot pray like the people there.”

Many of us who want to see prayer grow in our churches fail because we do not nurture the prayer level of the average believer. Take corporate prayer for instance. What protocol do you follow? Many mature pray-ers forget how to pray in corporate prayer gatherings. They do what I call “pray personal prayers in a group setting.” In other words they pray exactly how they would pray if they were alone. They go on and on—passionately—while other are left to listen, and unfortunately, to think I can’t pray that way, so this is not for me.

Jesus often went away to pray by Himself—and He prayed all night on many occasions. But when others were around, His prayers were short. His model prayer, which used plural pronouns, (a corporate prayer)—with pauses for effect--probably took no more than a minute. The longest prayer we see of His—John 17—maybe took four or five minutes. His public prayer in John 11:41-43 took only seconds, yet raised a man from the dead!

There is a protocol that needs to be followed in public prayer meetings. Many mature pray-ers ignore it—to the prayer meetings’ detriment. If your church wants to see more people--average believers—come out to prayer gatherings than you need to be sensitive to those just beginning to venture into corporate prayer. Keep your prayers short and simple. Save your deepest, most passionate prayers for your prayer closet. If struggling pray-ers realize that prayer meeting is a safe place to practice their praying, they will come.

Getting mature prayer people to understand the need to change may be difficult. Perhaps you can remind them that even Jesus’ last recording time of praying with others—in the Garden—resulted in people falling asleep.

There is another way we prayer zealots can be a detriment to the prayer growth in our congregation. It’s the all or nothing syndrome. We get a vision for what we would like to see in a prayer ministry or for prayer to move forward. But it may be too much for a church to accept. We may need to be content with baby steps toward it. Don’t have the attitude if I can’t get this then I won’t be happy. You need to be content with small beginnings and small victories.

--Jonathan Graf is the president of the Church Prayer Leaders Network. He is also a sought after conference speaker. To possibly put on a conference at your church, you may contact him at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

PrayerLeader OnLine interviews Bryan Chappell, the author of Praying Backwards

Q. Bryan, what did the Lord use to stir you to write a book on prayer?
I have wanted to encourage believers to believe in the power of prayer without making God into a genie or their prayers into magic formulas. Disappointment in our prayers or distrust in our God will always result from thinking that by snapping our fingers or praying "just right" God jump to do precisely what our human wisdom determines.

The Creator of the Universe is not waiting for us to tell Him how to run the world, but He is telling us how to turn to Him and trust His wisdom to make this world and eternity better than we can imagine through our prayers.

Q. Your introduction begins with: "How would your prayer change if you began where you normally end?" How/When did this question begin to reform your own approach to prayer?
As I listened to the prayers of my children, I began to recognize how childlike my own prayers were. My kids prayed for ponies and new bicycles and then ended with a rote “in Jesus’ name, amen.” Of course, they were not really praying for Jesus’ name or purposes but for their own desires. I easily discerned the self-orientation of my children’s prayers, but it took me some time to recognize that my own prayers were very similar. I prayed for success in ministry, the end of church conflicts, and more money for building, but too often I wasn’t really concerned for the spread of Christ’s glory; I just wanted a better life for me. I recognized that if I did not use the name of Jesus as a perfunctory end of my prayer, but rather as an intentional beginning, then my prayers more readily considered Christ’s purposes rather than my own. It’s hard really to pray, “Lord, in Jesus’ name, make me really important.” Putting Jesus first in priority, if not in the actual words of our prayers, keeps the One who is supposed to be Lord – Lord of our prayer.

Q. How serious is our misunderstanding of "In Jesus' name, amen"?

1. Most of us end our prayers “in Jesus’ name for one of two reasons: We have been instructed that Jesus tells us to pray in His name, so we think we need this biblical, “Roger, wilco, over and out” to sign off our prayer; or...
2. We know that we should approach God through Christ’s intercession rather than on the basis of our merit. Both of these concepts have biblical foundations. However, if we do not remember that praying in Jesus’ name means that we are petitioning God to answer our prayers in a way that glorifies and honors His Son, then our prayers will be more selfish than will ultimately satisfy Him or us. When we truly learn how to pray in Jesus’ name, then we can have great confidence that God will hear and answer because we know that He delights to honor His Son.

Q. What can a pastor or prayer leader do to mature their members into this radical understanding and practice?
A pastor or prayer leader’s most effective way to mature church members in prayer is to pray biblically before them. When our people hear prayer that is godly, biblical, humble and trusting in God, then they will begin to pray similarly. They will also develop spiritual instincts that help them discern prayers that are selfish, unbiblical and trusting in human wisdom more than God’s. Of course, we need to study biblical prayers, follow Christ’s own prayer patterns and read the works of prayer warriors who have gone before us. Still, nothing so matures our people’s prayers as hearing us regularly and truly pray in Jesus’ name.

Q. What wisdom can you share about prayer, both personal and corporate, with pastors and prayer leaders who are seeking to lead their members upward and forward in serious, scriptural, strategic praying?
Some say that the most effective prayers are offered when we pray without any doubt in what we want to happen. This is impossible. It is something like telling someone not to think about a pink elephant. If you tell me not to think about it, I cannot help but think about it. Prayer is not a mental game. When we pray, our faith is not in the object of our prayer (a new red bicycle or a new church sanctuary) but in the character of our God. He is the Heavenly Father who knows the end from the beginning, who loves us, who delights to hear from us, and who will answer our prayers in ways more beautiful and eternal than we can ask or imaging. My trust should not be in what my finite mind believes God should do, but in what the Good Shepherd delights to make heaven and earth the greatest blessing possible for His people. When we pray without any doubt in the character of our God, then the outcomes of our prayers may perplex us but they will not disappoint us.

Q. Bryan, please write a prayer that prayer leaders can pray in agreement with you.
Heavenly Father, I pray to You today in Jesus’ name. Focus my heart on the priorities of my Savior, whom You have provided out of Your great love. Please do in me and through me whatever will bring most glory to Jesus. As You listen to each petition I offer, please help me to offer it:

• Claiming Christ’s merit more than my own
• Seeking Christ’s purposes more than my own
• Loving Christ’s glory more than my own.

These are the petitions that I offer:

1. (Place your petitions here)
2. 
   
3. 
   

By the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit, transform my requests into instruments for accomplishing Your will to have Christ honored everywhere--especially in my heart. Make my greatest desire, highest joy and deepest fulfillment Jesus’ glory. I can attempt all you require of my life, face all you design for my path, rejoice in all You will for my eternity, when I know all is for Jesus’ name.

Do what You know is best for Him, for this most blesses me. Forgive my readiness to forget and my tendency to doubt that what most glorifies Him, most satisfies me. When my mind shrinks from these truths, enlarge my heart for Christ’s purposes. For Christ’s sake and for mine, help me always to pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Prayer and Children

Spiritual Revival and Children

By Kim Butts

A great many adults and churches today are praying for spiritual revival. While revival might be a complicated concept to teach children, the idea of spiritual hunger is not. One of the best things you can do for your church children's spiritual development is to teach them to pray in a way that grows hunger for God. When God fills that hunger, that's revival! Here are some ideas:

Teach children to recognize quickly the presence of sin in their lives, confess it, and repent of it. It is rare in this day and age to find people who are willing to admit their sins, and a sensitivity to sin will be valuable to children as they grow. Children need to understand that nothing we do that saddens God and grieves the Holy Spirit is acceptable in His sight—even if it is a very small thing. Teach them that as soon as they recognize sin, they should confess it to God and repent. Then, be sure to help them learn confidence that the Lord's loving forgiveness and willingness will cleanse them: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 Jn. 1:9).

Teach children to develop humility before God. Perhaps the biggest barrier to revival in our day is the lack of humility among God's people. Prayer and fasting are a critical part of humility, because there is no better way to deal with pride than to do without what is essential for life. If children can begin to learn the importance of fasting and prayer, they will be equipped far beyond most adults in our culture today.

Teach children to recognize and reject idols. Nothing should take first place over our relationship with our Heavenly Father. For young people, idols often develop in several areas: hobbies, recreation, leisure time, friends, family, jobs, or even involvement in church activities. Teach your children that whatever distracts our primary attention away from God is an idol. Encourage them to make lifestyle changes that will lessen the influence of whatever their idols are, thus allowing Christ to be first.

Teach children to earnestly seek after God's heart. It is one thing to pray for what is on our own heart; it is quite another to pray what is on God's heart. When these two things become one and the same, prayer increases in power and effectiveness. Help children learn that spending time in God's Word is indispensable to knowing His will for their lives. When they remove the patterns of this world (idols) from their lives, and focus on spending time with God in His Word, they can be transformed by the renewing of their minds (Ro. 12:2). This will give them a firm grasp of God's will for their lives, as well as the people and situations they pray for.

Teach children to have a heart for the lost. When they spend time in the Word, they will see that the lost are clearly on God's heart. There is no point in praying for revival without an all-consuming passion to see lost people come to Christ.

Teach children to develop a lifestyle of praise. God desires our praise, and praise comes quite naturally to children! It is only as we get older and more self-conscious that we tend to hold back the more expressive forms of praise in public. Teach young people that without God we are hopeless and helpless—and that with God we are filled with hope and victory. A lifestyle of praise from the lips of repentant, humble children honors God . . . and opens the door for heaven-sent revival.

Kim Butts is a vice president with Harvest Prayer Ministries and the author of The Praying Family. She is also an advisor for PrayKids!, a magazine for children produced by Pray!.

Prayer and Missions

Praying for Missionaries . . . Biblically

By David Butts

The most effective prayer is one that comes directly from God's Word. When we see something in the Bible and know it to be God's will, then we are able to pray with greater faith. This especially applies to our prayer for missionaries. In the Bible, we find a number of prayer requests from the first great missionary, the Apostle Paul.

Each of these requests should be included in our prayers for missionaries.

Acceptance. Paul (as are missionaries today) was rightly concerned about how other believers perceived and accepted his ministry. Many missionaries are damaged or discouraged, not by those they are trying to reach with the gospel, but by other missionaries. Each is focused and called by God, but may have a different idea about how to reach a particular group of people. "Pray . . . that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there" (Ro. 15:31).

Boldness. The request is made for courage in presenting the gospel. Getting on an airplane to fly across the ocean does not automatically make a missionary bold. "Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel" (Eph. 6:19).

Clarity. Paul didn't want to be misunderstood, but rather to be able to communicate the gospel clearly. Can you imagine how difficult it is for a missionary to learn a new language, or try to translate the Bible into a language that has never been written down before? "Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should" (Col. 4:4).

Deliverance. There is a place for the prayer of deliverance from the attack of the enemy, from whatever direction the attack may come. Missionaries need prayers of protection from physical, emotional, and spiritual harm as they serve Christ in a different culture. "Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea" (Ro. 15:31).

Extension. Paul asks for prayer that his ministry may be extended beyond its current boundaries. "And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains" (Col. 4:3).

Fruitfulness. Paul, like all missionaries, was concerned about church growth. He wanted to see the gospel spread and be accepted. "Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you" (2 Thess. 3:1).

David Butts is the president of Harvest Prayer Ministries and the chairman of America's National Prayer Committee.

(The six specific headings for prayer are taken from Prayer Life, by T.W. Hunt and Catherine Walker. Published by the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board.)

Dynamic Prayer Meetings

The In and Out Prayer Meeting

Does your church have multiple offerings for adults on the night your corporate prayer meeting is scheduled? Choir practice, worship team practice, kids programs, youth, adult Bible studies? Though it would be wonderful to not have anything that competes with prayer, here’s one church’s creative solution.

Westmont Alliance Church in Westmont, Illinois has a two-hour prayer meeting on Wednesday nights, running from 6:30 to 8:30. Other options are available from 7 to 8, such as a Bible study, worship practice, etc. The prayer time, however, is broken into six 20-minute segments, with each segment focusing on a different prayer topic. Some topics are the same each week, but some rotate through every several weeks. Topics include things such as: missions, pastors, spiritual health of church, the sick, community transformation, etc. While some people come for the entire time, the idea is to let people come in and out of the prayer meeting, showing up for the subjects they are most burdened to pray for. Other ministries that meet on Wednesdays give permission for a person to slip out of their meeting to go to a 20-minute prayer time.

This pattern has done two things:

1. It caters to people’s natural burdens, allowing them to just pray for the things on their hearts.
2. People who would not have otherwise come because they needed to be at a practice, or wanted to be in the Bible study, show up more regularly for a 20 minute segment. This gets more people involved in corporate prayer. The fact that the prayer time is longer than the time for other gatherings also allows for more people to participate. Many will come to the prayer time just before or after their gathering meets.

For this to work, you need leaders who will keep to the time and understand the need to jump right into prayer. Prayer guides are often provided for each segment, but prayer requests are never taken.