BUILDING THE CHURCH THROUGH PRAYER: Part 5

FRONT-LINE PRAYER

We need to continue to build the church through prayer. In my last blog, I introduced Jack Miller’s idea of “front-line prayers.” Front-line prayers seek God for something much bigger than prayer for our own needs. It is prayer that fully focuses on God and considers His passions and desires.

Previously I began my description with:

1. It is prayer that is focused on God’s power, presence, and kingdom.

Let’s further unfold what front-line prayer is…

2. It is a prayer that asks God for the flourishing of the Church.

You fill prayer meetings to pray for the church to grow and mature, for people to grow in Christ, for worship to be living and vibrant, and for the prayer life of the church to grow. It is praying for the church to get out of apathy, for the knowledge of the gospel to explode, and for the church to shine in the city.

3. It is a passionate desire to know God more and more.

We seek after God’s presence and we ask for Him to open the eyes of our heart so that we see Him more clearly. We begin to ask for His glory. It is going hard after Him when we gather because we want to sense His presence in our midst.

4. It is bold, specific and persistent prayer.

We pray for particular people groups and neighborhoods. We seek out God’s grace for them. We don’t let Him go until we see people coming to know Jesus.

5. It is prevailing corporate prayer

When you spread coals out, a fire dies down. When you bring them together, the fire begins to roar. Likewise as believers, we must pray together to keep ourselves hot for God. We must gather together corporately and pray.

May our churches look to God more fully with such bold and prevailing prayer! May we see many in our communities come into His kingdom as we experience His presence together!

BUILDING THE CHURCH THROUGH PRAYER: Part 4

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO PRAY?

In his book The Heart of a Servant Leader, Jack Miller writes:

“Make the whole ministry center on private and corporate prayer. Do not expect bigger victories in tough areas until corporate praying becomes the complete center of the ministry. The reason? It is in prayer together that we find grace to give up control to the Father, rely exclusively on the Spirit, and see the demons subdued. It is here we get our life, vigor, zest, and authority for the battle…Without constant adoration, thanksgiving, intercession, and confession together, we are going to teach people to rely on our traditions, plans, technologies, and methods rather than on grace.”

Miller then describes the difference between “maintenance prayers” and “front-line prayers.”

• Maintenance prayers are short prayers in which we ask for our basic needs, health, and for God to consider our personal situations.
• Front-line prayers seek God for something much bigger than our own needs. It is praying in a way that we are considering God and His passions and desires.
  

What is “Front-line Prayer?”

First, it is prayer that is focused on God’s power, presence, and kingdom. Instead of quickly moving to “Give us our daily bread…” we stay and pray for “God, your Kingdom come, you will be done” with intensity and often in protracted ways.

Front-line prayer…

• is prayer for the renewal of the Church and of the city. It is prayer that is larger and more intense.
• is when people gather and cry out and “lift their voices together” (Acts 4:24) as we pray in the Kingdom of God.
• seeks after God’s grace and recognizes that nothing can be done without it.
  

Grace is indeed a key basis for this manner of prayer. When the Gospel becomes more than a concept, the love of Jesus becomes so real to you that Jesus becomes a foundation which holds you up. With such a foundation we can confidently ask for God’s kingdom to come upon our church and cities for His glory.

I’ll look to unfold more about Front-line Prayer in my next blog…

BUILDING THE CHURCH THROUGH PRAYER: Part 3

The book of Acts is a story about the power of the Holy Spirit advancing God’s word through the Church into cities and nations. Prayer was the key to the release of the Holy Spirit empowered Church to make effective the gospel of Christ.

Both biblically and historically prayer brings advancement of God’s cause.

Prayer meetings launched a worldwide missionary movement. In Acts 13:1-3, while in a prayer meeting, the church experienced the Holy Spirit calling Barnabas and Paul to plant churches in the nations. The first recorded launch of the gospel in Europe came from the prayer meeting in Acts 16:12-15. Paul was part of a riverside prayer meeting in Philippi. At that prayer meeting, Lydia’s heart was opened to receive Christ.

Prayer has been as a powerful force throughout church history:

• Jeremiah Lamphier called a prayer meeting in downtown New York in 1857. Within six months, 10,000 businessmen were praying for revival. Within two years, two million people were saved and added to the churches.

• James McQuilkin and three others met in a schoolhouse in Ireland every Friday evening for prayer. By the end of the year 1858, fifty believers had come to pray and they prayed for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The next year, an estimated 100,000 were saved and added to the churches in Ulster.

Corporate, prevailing, intense prayer always preceded every move of God. People began crying out to God in a way they had not previously experienced. May we also fervently and continually pray for God to move as we look at all that awaits us in the year ahead.

BUILDING THE CHURCH THROUGH PRAYER: Part 2

We are considering how God has chosen to build His church through prayer. We need to first answer the basic question: “What is prayer?” Let me provide some key principles to define prayer more clearly.

• Prayer must never be an afterthought. It should never be given mere “lip service.”
• Prayer is communication with God and is foundational to the believer’s relationship with him.
• Prayer is the strategy for receiving a God-given vision and for developing a Spirit-driven strategy. God is not obligated to bless man’s plans—especially if He was not consulted in creating them. However, He loves to bless His people when they are obedient to the plans He has given them.
• Prayer is an expression of dependence and an acknowledgment of who is really God in our lives.
• Prayer is a demonstration of faith in a God who does the impossible.

Let’s not be content with what we can build with our own strength. Let’s not just have a church that prays but let’s become a praying church. Do we desire to see the gospel impact our communities and God move in our churches? Let’s pray.

BUILDING THE CHURCH THROUGH PRAYER: Part 1

Years ago a pastor from England named Charles Spurgeon saw his church grow from a handful of people to over 6,000. He noted something important in this experience. He stated: “the prayer meeting ought to be very precious to us, and to be cherished very much by us as a Church, for to it we owe everything. When our little chapel was all but empty; was it not a well-known fact that the prayer meeting was always full? And when the Church increased, and the place was not large enough, it was the prayer meeting that did it all."

Nowhere does the value of the church praying emerge more clearly than in the book of Acts with the ministry of the early church. Acts demonstrates a church that works. The book of Acts is more than a history of the early church. It is the chronology of the prayer-based activity of the first multiplying church network.

It’s important to see the ways God built the early church through prayer. When reading Acts, prayer constantly appears on the scene as the mission unfolds. Note how prayer is a part of these occasions:

1. The church is born in an extended prayer meeting (“devoting themselves to prayer” Acts 1:13,14)
2. Prayer is a part of choosing leadership. (“And they prayed and said, ‘You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one” Acts 1:24-25).
3. Prayer results from the Spirit’s empowering. As the Holy Spirit fills believers, they immediately gather in homes to pray (“and they devoted themselves…to prayer” Acts 2:4, 42-47).
4. On the way to prayer, a man is healed and revival breaks out (Acts 3:1-10).
5. An external crisis drives the church to prayer (Acts 4:27-31).
6. An internal conflict leads the apostles to prioritize their time of prayer together (Acts 6:1-6).
7. Prayer is prominent as persecution begins and Christians are scattered (Acts 8:1-2).
8. Prayer is vital to bringing the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 11:14-18).
9. Prayer is instrumental in Peter’s escape from prison (Acts 12:1-9).
10. Prayer gives birth to the first missionary journey (Acts 13:1-3).
11. Prayer is instrumental in Paul’s second missionary journey (Acts 16:6-10).

With these examples in mind, let’s make prayer a primary activity in our life together. We must build our lives and our churches with a rich and fervent prayer life.

A MISSION-FOCUSED REPRODUCING CHURCH: Part 6

This is the final post in our examination of what it means to be a Mission-Focused Reproducing Church. Today we look at the concluding reasons why Newfrontiers is committed to aggressively planting mission-focused reproducing churches.

5. Planting mission-focused reproducing churches keeps us open-handed.

Church planting is a purposeful upstream swim against the current of institutionalism. As we plant churches that have mission within the very center of their DNA, these churches will reflect the generosity and openness of Jesus in a culture that is wary of institutionalism.

6. It keeps us fresh

By constantly sending people out, we allow for new people to take their “seats” and new leaders to emerge. Churches don’t institutionalize because they have grown to a certain size over a long period of time. Institutionalization occurs because they fail to look outside their own walls.

7. It keeps us focused

By repeatedly participating in the birthing process of new churches, we are constantly reminded of our own mission and vision and why we seek to plant mission-focused reproducing churches in the first place.

Planting churches is much more than self-preservation. Included in the church planting process is biblical teaching, evangelism, discipling and worship!

8. It keeps us dependent

It’s hard to let good leaders go. It’s hard to let money go. Birthing new churches helps us to trust God as our constant Provider. We must be willing to risk significant sums of money, members, and leaders. We will miss those whom we send, but we will rejoice in the many people the kingdom of God will gain.

Jesus has called us to “march off of the map.” Like the Church in Acts we are a reproducing church movement.

Each Church must own this vision, it’s not enough for this vision to just be the property of apostolic leaders. Being a reproducing church is what you are, not just what you do.

If you have connected to our apostolic team then you have joined a vision. You are a part of this world-changing vision through your participation, financial giving, serving, witness, availability and care for one another. Let’s strengthen our commitment to the mission the Lord Jesus has called us to by planting mission-focused reproducing churches everywhere we go.

A MISSION-FOCUSED REPRODUCING CHURCH: Part 5

The final thing we will examine in this post and the next will be the “why” of church planting. There are definite reasons Newfrontiers is committed to aggressively planting mission-focused reproducing churches. I’ll share some of these reasons with you now and some in my final post next week.

1. New churches reach more people.

Christian Schwarz of Natural Church Development surveyed over 1,000 churches and discovered that smaller churches were 16 times more effective in winning new converts to Jesus than mega-churches. Having more entry points into the Kingdom of God increases the possibility of people coming to faith in Christ.

Ron Gladden poses the question, “If your city had only one restaurant, would more people eat out?” The obvious is that the more restaurants increase the possibilities of more people eating out. The more churches the greater potential for reaching more people with the gospel.

2. New churches reach new people.

New churches reach new generations, new residents and new people groups. New churches attract new groups about 6-10 times better and faster than older churches do. In a new church, younger and newer people can get into its leadership faster. New churches have a goal to reach new people and aren’t hindered by attempting to satisfy the desires of long-time members.

70% of people in the USA have no meaningful church relationship. The harvest is great and many new people will not be reached without new churches. Jesus said “open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest." (John 4:35)

The harvest is not only plentiful but it is also diverse. Around our building it is estimated that 70 different languages are spoken. Walk our streets and tour the world. One church can’t reach everyone so it will take all kinds of churches. The diversity of harvest requires a diversity of churches to make disciples of all people groups.

3. New churches release new leaders.

Starting new churches provides an opportunity to raise more workers for the harvest. A reproducing church will reach the harvest by developing, and releasing new leaders for church planting.

4. New, healthy churches grow and reproduce.

Hardly anything demonstrates the health of a congregation as much as the willingness and ability to give birth to new churches. Reproduction is a basic principle of life for all organisms. Churches are not designed by God to be unfruitful; they are designed to grow and reproduce other churches. As churches multiply, the potential harvest increases proportionately.