If the old adage is true that “Vision leaks,” prayer for global mission must gush. We’ve visited church after church with unused prayer rooms, aging prayer bulletin boards, and monthly concerts of prayer that are petering out. Has anybody discovered a secret to keep vibrant the prayers for global vision and mission? Not that long ago, we visited a guy who is the author for a HUGE book on prayer. We asked to see his prayer room (mentioned in his book). It was currently being used to store last year’s Christmas decorations. (We’re not lying.) What do we do to keep prayer vibrant? How do we keep its glory from fading? What does YOUR church do to stay active and keep your members engaged for daily prayers for global mission (or weekly? … or monthly? … or… yikes.. annually at least?). If prayer is the strategy and if it’s supposed to be the main thing we do to get more harvesters, then, … if harvesters are fading, could it be we’re not praying? Does somebody have an answer?
Ideas we’ve seen work:
Find, then don’t let go, an advocate who will schedule and promote prayer in your organization or church. Encourage this person like crazy. This just might be the best and most amazing idea of all. Give this person a title that honors him/her, like, “Vice President of Prayer” or whatever works at your church or org. And then make sure this person has access to anything and everything she/he desires. When he/she asks for platform, budget, time, print, digital, social media, … there’s only one answer that works: Sure. Honestly, this has been CLUTCH in our org. I (Doug) think I could have left the org a decade ago. But please DON’T take our VP of Prayer. Talk about “too valuable to lose.” No money in your budget for a prayer person? Seriously? Do you really want to be that church or org? (So at least make it a stated goal that it’s your very next hire?)
But what has worked for you? Please. We have to find solutions. We can’t afford to let a three-decade uptick of prayer mobilization slide into the sunset. Thanks for any ideas you can share by clicking on Comment following the web or app version of this item.
What has worked for our small missions organization is a 1/2 hour Saturday morning freeconferencecall.com call-in prayer meeting. To make it work, I have to prepare a 1-page list of current praises and prayer requests and send it out every Friday to a list of pray-ers who have indicated interest in receiving it. Then on Saturday morning we don’t waste time talking; we just pray through the list. We’ve had remarkable and very specific answers to prayer, which keep the prayer warriors motivated. This requires that someone every week make the international phone calls necessary to stay current on prayer needs of our international partners and take the time (2-3 hours) to type up such a list. But for us, it’s been more than worth it!
Life runs in cycles,
birth-joy-enthusiasm,
maturing love and commitment,
taking it all for granted,
loosing the plot,
renewal or death.
The Whitfield/Wesley Revival/ Awakening changed the world, but the Nazarene movement came to renew, then the AoG.
The Nestorian/Eastern church seemed to maintain growth and passion for centuries. Philip Jenkins’ “The Lost History of Christianity” opened my eyes – much of the ME was Christian and highly influential – Genghis Kans wife was one.
It was larger that the Western Churches combined! How why I find encouraging and revealing.
Not original with us but our mission org has a monthly Day of Prayer for our Staff with the day broken into 20 minute prayer slots, each full time staff and some part time assigned one of the slots. They, individually, go to our Chapel/Prayer Room and pray for the requests from our International Staff or some special focus for that day.
This is in addition to our normal 30 minutes(+/-) Staff Prayer meetings every Mon., Tues., Thurs., & Fri.
Also, in Matthew 9:38 and Luke 10:2 the Lord taught his disciples to PRAY for workers for the harvest and beg Him to cast them out into the harvest.. So at 9:38 AM or PM or 10:02 AM or PM, pray for workers for the harvest. You can pick your time…but PRAY for workers for the harvest. Set the alarm on your smart phone or reminder on your calendar to alert you to pray! I first heard this idea from Neil Cole.
We have a room dedicated to prayer. We have the different regions of the world labeled on one wall with pictures and update letters from our overseas workers.
Every Tuesday morning 7:30-8:30am, we Skype one of our overseas workers to get a report from them and pray for them and their ministry. If a worker is in town, we get a live report from them and pray for them. We also hear reports from those leaving on/returning from short-term trips and pray for them.
Our church is very missions-minded, in general. The senior pastor is in the Middle East right now doing a conference for pastors. We also have two full-time pastors serving in the missions department. We use Realm to post prayer requests/updates online from and about our overseas workers. All this helps to keep missions, particularly to unreached peoples, on the forefront of people’s minds.