CONFERENCE EVENTS
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PRAYER FOR YOUR CHURCH
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Lord, I lift up the children and youth in my congregation to You. May the little ones remain humble examples of what we adults need to become in the kingdom. Let their conduct always be pure and right with reputations that show that they remember You, Creator God. Teach them to declare Your marvelous deeds. May they flee evil desires and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace. (Matt 18:3-4; Prov. 20:11; Eccl. 12:1; Ps. 71:17; 2 Tim. 2:22)
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Home  October 2006 October 2006 Complete Issue
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October 2006 Complete Issue |
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Vol. 3, No. 10
Introduction
We were recently stunned by a response from a large, well-known church in the Akron, Ohio area. A member of the host church for our Cleveland regional was calling churches to invite them and ask if they would hand out brochures to people from their congregaton who were interested in prayer. While she had felt the rejection of other churches who didn't want to promote something from a competing church, this response was a new one. Upon turning down our flyers, the personal assistant to the senior pastor resonded: "prayer is for old people, and they certainly are not going to travel that far."
Aren't you glad you aren't the prayer leader at that church! I mention
this story as a "backhanded" encouragement. Many of us, because of
frustrations, often look on our church's prayer responses negatively.
But it is often all in the perspective. We need to develop a more
positive picture. I recently led a concert of prayer at a church of 600
or so--40 people showed up. Some were a little discouraged, but a
pastor commented how wonderful it was that virtually all the pastoral
leadership came. While soem saw a negative, due to the numbers, he saw
a positive. Keep looking for the positive. It will encourage you!
Jonathan Graf
President
It Seems to Me . . .
. . . Our message is starting to get through!
As I reflect back on several recent meetings, I am encouraged at the
readiness factor in those who come to here me talk about corporate
prayer or to lead them in corporate prayer. Such has not always been
the case! I can remember times and places when those assembled seemed
to be sitting with arms foiled across their chest, resistant to the
call to prayer.
- In late summer I led a prayer retreat for attended by three
people--the three members of a church staff. The senior pastor set
aside two days for refocusing on prayer and wanted his staff to begin
the journey together. Prayer will be forever integral to their ministry
as a team.
- A former denominational colleague, now pastoring, invited me for a
teaching/preaching weekend as a step toward creating a prayer culture
throughout his new congregation. And his members came hungry and
thirsty for my messages.
- In Greensboro, North Carolina three dozen pastors from the same
association of churches met for a day of prayer. Their state prayer
coordinator brought me in to model fresh corporate prayer methods. I
could "see" light bulbs turning on as pastors realized they could
replicate with their people what we were experiencing in that meeting.
- Other positive responses included: preaching on prayer at an
evangelism conference, leading denominational executives in a new style
of corporate prayer and being the main speaker at the Annual Meeting of
a group of churches.
Prayer featured at an evangelism conference? In a meeting of
denominational leaders (who had to voluntarily come a day early for the
prayer time)? As the main topic at an annual meeting?
It seems to me, your work, our collective efforts, are beginning to bear good fruit!
Pastor Phil
http://www.PrayerLeader.blogspot.com
http://www.PrayingPastorblog.blogspot.com
Plan Now to Attend Empowered 2007
A Revived Heart . . . A Revived Church . . . A Revived Community marks
the theme of our 2007 national convention, held at Sunshine Community
Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, June 13-15, 2007.
Keynote speakers are Fred Hartley (Revived Heart), Jerome McNeil, Terry
Teykl, Frank Damazio (Revived Church), adn George Otis Jr. (Revived
Community). Our worship will be led by Daniel Brymer and his band, the
team that led worship at Prayer Quake this past summer.
We will also have three pre-conferences--six hour intensive seminars on
Wednesday (an extra fee is charged for these). You can come in early
for "Developing Dynamic Prayer Meetings" with Daniel Henderson,
"Hearing God" with Ted Kallman, or one on Revival, facilitated by
members of the National Revival Network.
Registrations start in December. The cost is $150 ($120 to CPLN
members). Early bird rates start as low as $95 for CPLN members. And
remember--pastors are always half price--$75.
Sharpen Our Focus
A few summers ago, while on vacation I visited a little church, one
that had probably (hopefully) seen better days in its past. Upon
arrival (10 minutes early) I walked in. No one was in the foyer to
greet people, so I walked into the empty sanctuary—empty except for two
little kids plunking on the piano. I sat half-way up the 10-row little
auditorium. I was warmly greeted when people started arriving (all 22
of them).
The service began when the pianist shooed the kids off the piano. What
transpired was perhaps the most pathetic worship service I have ever
seen. We sang a few “contemporary songs” from a © 1980 chorus book (we
sang them at half-speed). Then we had to sing happy birthday to several
July birthday people, who happily came to the front so we could honor
them. The elder who was delivering the sermon that day (I think he got
it off the internet) preached on what a good Christian was.
That church had lost any concept of what a worship service is. It
focused almost entirely on the people in the congregation. It was
basically a small-group fellowship time in a sanctuary.
There was one blessing in the service, a prayer time. Now lest you
think it’s my bias that made this good, it wasn’t. They called a young
adult woman (probably in her mid 20s) to the front. After a long search
to fill the women’s ministry leader position this girl had stepped up.
Now they were going to pray for her as she started her new ministry.
They had the woman come up (all of them), lay hands on her, and pray.
She started getting choked up as one after another, these women asked
the Lord Jesus to fill her, to enable her.
What made this the best part of the service was that it was virtually
the only part of the service that focused on Jesus Christ. Their
“calling out for Jesus” prayer sent us heavenward.
Sadly, this little church is not unusual these days. I don’t mean there
are a lot of small churches that have forgotten how to “do church.”
There are some very large churches that have the same ailment (not that
they sing happy birthday to people in the worship service). The problem
is—no it’s a crisis—Jesus Christ is no longer at the center of what
they are about. In most churches it is about us—the people. David
Bryant has said for most Christians and churches today, Jesus Christ is
our mascot, not our monarch! He peps us up, but doesn’t rule over us.
It’s time for churches to go back to what sets us apart from being a
social club—Jesus Christ! He should be our entire focus! It’s time to
pray Jesus back into our midst.
--Jonathan Graf is the president of the Church Prayer Leaders Network. You may contact him at
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Seek God for the City 2007 Available
One of the most powerful tools in our arsenals to grow prayer in the
local church is a prayer initiative-- a special time of prayer that
lasts for a week, month or 40 days. One of the best available every
year is Seek God for the City, developed by Waymakers. Check it out at
www.waymakers.org.
To challenge you in this area of a prayer initiative, click here to
connect to an article on our webstie about the power of a prayer
initiatives.
New World Map Makes Great Visual Prayer Tool
The World Missions Atlas Project (www.WorldMAP.org) and its partners in
cooperation with the greater missions community have, with expanded and
updated data and technology, completed the "Global Status of
Evangelical Christianity" wall map. This map illustrates the status of
evangelical Christianity and church planting based upon the Church
Planting Progress Indicators (CPPI) database maintained by the Global
Research Department of the International Mission Board of the Southern
Baptist Convention. Included on this map are three inset maps
displaying the global status of Bible Translation, global status of
Jesus film translation, and global response to the film.
Highlighted on the map are over 100,000 cities, towns and villages
thematically color-coded to depict both their relative size and their
evangelical status based upon the primary language and people group
living in each location.
This significant presentation of evangelical Christianity will be distributed worldwide, and is prayerfully expected:
- To provide a fresh new perspective on the mission of the Church in its endeavor to fulfill the Great Commission;
- To initiate prayer in and for many new areas of the world;
- To facilitate the desire of ministering both locally and cross culturally;
- To be presented and studied in thousands of churches, mission
organizations, Christian schools, and homes around the world;
- To spur more research into the location of Churches and their health; and
- To stir in each individual Christian's heart a desire to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The "Global Status of Evangelical Christianity" map may be ordered
from: www.worldmap.org or www.campuscrusade.com/worldmap at a very
discounted price or contact
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. You can also download
digital copies of the map as well from www.worldmap.org.
--Lisa Flake is the missions prayer expert at Harvest Prayer
Ministries. She is available for missions prayer seminars and
workshops. You can contact her at
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.
A Pastor Muses on Prayer
Prayer leader Online interviews Ray Pritchard, senior Pastor of Calvary Memorial Church, Oak Park, Illinois.
Q. Ray, you are a pastor-teacher who recognizes the role of prayer in
the life of both the believer and the corporate body. What factors led
to this awareness?
After serving as a pastor for 26 years in three churches in widely
differing circumstances, I can look back over some wonderful high
points and some very difficult low moments. I have known the thrill of
victory and the agony of defeat. Often they came in the same day. When
I look back to those early days of my ministry, I smile because like a
lot of young people, I came out of seminary with no shortage of
self-confidence. That in itself is a good thing and even a gift from
God because the young often approach life with a kind of fearless
courage that enables them to do things the rest of us think can't be
done. Time has a way of refining our self-confidence and ideally
replacing it with a new kind of God-confidence.
In my early days in Oak Park we came to a crisis in the church that
plunged us into controversy. It was a combination of worship issues,
theological issues, and the whole question of what sort of church we
would become. At one point a man came to me and told me that not only
should I leave the church, but that I should never be a pastor again
and that he would work to see that happen. In God's providence at that
very moment I spent a few days teaching at a mission station in Belize.
There in the jungle, far removed from all the controversy, I had a
powerful experience of the Holy Spirit. I pictured the church with a
large black cloud hanging over it. It seemed that the Lord was saying
to me, "You have seen what you can do, but you have no answers for this
problem." I came to a deep conviction that the cloud would not lift by
preaching or programs but only by prayer. When I shared that with the
congregation upon my return, the people were deeply moved. Out of that
came the prayer movement at Calvary, and l look back on that as the
turning point of my entire ministry in Oak Park.
Q. What led you to write And When You Pray and how did it help you in your pastoral role?
In the early 1990s I happened to read a book that mentioned the
importance of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles'
Creed to the early Christians. The Ten Commandments tells us how to
have a right relationship with God, the Lord's Prayer shows us how to
maintain that relationship, and the Apostles' Creed lays out the broad
outlines of the Christian faith from the very beginning. I decided to
preach through all those documents as a means of equipping my own
congregation. It happens that I did the Ten Commandments in 1991 and
the Lord's Prayer in 1992. It took me 12 more years, but I finally got
to the Apostles' Creed in 2004. By the way, I should say that I
recommend this sort of preaching to pastors everywhere because it
provides a unified approach to the spiritual life and it connects the
congregation to the larger stream of Christian history across the
generation.
As I preached through the Lord's Prayer, I found it a profoundly
enriching experience because those few simple sentences start in
heaven, sweep down to the earth, and then take up back to heaven again.
Because I was not raised in a church that said the Lord's Prayer very
often, I had never studied it in depth. The book simply came forth from
the sermons and from my own reflections on the words of Jesus. I still
remember meeting a Christian leader who told me that there was a part
of the prayer that everyone should pray every day. He said he learned
it himself as a young man when he asked a wise older leader to help him
as he was just starting out. So from the older leader to my friend to
me, here is the one part of the Lord's Prayer we should pray every day:
"Yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever, Amen." We ought
to pray that way to remind ourselves it's not our kingdom we're
building, it's God's. It's not our power that matters, it's God's. It's
not our glory we seek, it's God's. Many days those simple words have
refocused my soul.
Q. A praying pastor is strategic to the corporate prayer life of the
congregation. What struggles did you encounter? How did you
compensate/overcome them?
Years ago I read a book by Peter Wagner where he talked about the
importance of pastors having a "prayer shield" to cover them. As a
result I recruited 15-20 men and asked them to become my prayer
partners. As I recall, the men were not only ready, they were eager to
pray for me. I wrote them with updates, met with them occasionally,
and updated them on my particular needs. Later we opened that ministry
to women and called it the Prayer Warriors movement, which eventually
grew to over 200 people. That led to building a prayer room under the
sanctuary where people would come to pray during all the worship
services. Looking back, I can see that there was a correlation between
the evident blessing of God on my ministry and the strength of those
who were praying for me. It is not a matter of numbers but of fervent
believers who lifted up their pastor in prayer. The first man I ever
recruited as a prayer partner eventually moved to a distant city. Every
time I see him (every couple of years), he tells me that he still prays
for me every morning at 6:30.
Knowing that so many people were praying for me gave me purpose and
endurance in my own walk with God. I once had a friend tell me he was
praying for my prayer life. That took me aback for a moment, but I
think that was a wonderful gift. I have no doubt that my prayers had
more depth and power because others were praying for my prayers.
Q. In your observation, what is the biggest misconception pastors have regarding prayer?
I suppose most pastors instinctively feel that prayer comes to the very
core of what we ought to be doing, yet in our culture we often are not
rewarded for time spent in prayer. We live in a performance-based world
where pastors are asked to produce tangible results quickly. While it
has never been easy to be a pastor, I think that expectations are
higher than ever and patience is lower than ever. The honeymoon for
most new pastors doesn't last very long. As a result it's easy for a
pastor to fall into the trap of thinking that he's got to get busy and
make things happen now, today, this very moment. Slowly we can slip
into the fallacy of believing that our "production" in the ministry
depends on us. To the extent we begin to think that way, prayer will
not seem very important to us. But once we fall into that trap, we
enter a game we cannot win and that will only wear us down and
eventually burn us out.
No pastor can satisfy the competing demands of all the people in his
church. Unless we build a strong inner core where our souls find rest
in God, we will probably not last very long in the ministry or we will
be swept away by one fad or another or we will be held captive by
interest groups in the church, and we will probably become angry,
frustrated and disillusioned. At that point prayer becomes a burden,
not a blessing.
All of us as pastors struggle with prayer. And that struggle itself is
not sinful. It is a reminder that we are made of flesh and that
something in us will fight against prayer because prayer is an
admission that apart from God, we are a bunch of pathetic losers. The
flesh flights against that judgment but it is true nonetheless. When we
pray, we launch a revolution against self-sufficiency and plant the
flag of God's sovereignty in our heart.
Q. Ray, write a prayer for your colleagues who lead ministries and congregations.
Father in heaven, I thank You for the godly men and women You have
called to lead Your church. I ask your special help for those who are
discouraged and feeling overwhelmed. Grant them a fresh vision of Your
love. Help them to see that You love them beyond all human reason. Your
cross has proved forever that You love the unlovely because while we,
the leaders of Your church, were yet sinners, Christ died for us. May
we never forget that truth. Save us from the folly of preaching to
others what we fail to believe ourselves. Show us again that apart from
You, we are nothing but pathetic losers.
Thank You for calling us out of the marketplace of life and giving us a
job to do in Your vineyard. When we are tempted to compare or to
complain, open the eyes of our heart to see the glory of what shall one
day be revealed to us.
Grant courage to the faint of heart.
Grant wisdom to the confused.
Grant strength to those who being tempted.
Grant overflowing love to those whose love is running on empty.
Let Jesus be seen in us so that those who follow us might truly be following Him. Amen.
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