Video Transcript: Developing a Ministry of Prayer
Welcome back. Next to the last session in this class on leadership, you'll notice the title on this one, developing a ministry of prayer. Now, I want to take just a moment to remind us where we have been in all of this thing as we've been defining leadership and looking at that in great detail that a leader, somebody like you, somebody will have certain personality that God has given you, as somebody with some baggage that you carrying from your past and various ways, somebody with your spiritual gifts, that are empowered by the Holy Spirit, people like you are a leader, you interact with a culture and that is the people who are engaged in a certain place at a certain time, and they have certain ways of doing things, how things are done here, that culture can be good and it can be not so good. And so the leader interacts with the culture and the people in that culture in order to define a preferable future. In other words, where are we going, and and what kind of changes are going to be needed there, and then provides the impetus for the prayer and the planning that is necessary for that to become reality here. It is in words, a leader with all his pluses and minuses, strengths and weaknesses interacts with a group of people to define the culture, the way things are done here, in order to develop a vision for a preferable future and then provides the impetus for doing the actions necessary to bring about that future with plans and prayers. So that's kind of where we are in that section of planning, and praying. And we've talked a lot about strategic planning in here. We've talked about, you know, change theory, we've talked about the the price that you got to pay to live out a vision and all of those sorts of things. Today, I want to talk about the importance of prayer. I've mentioned that so many times in these in these presentations. Your ability to have a ministry of prayer is going to deeply affect your ability to attain the preferable future I just want to share with you a couple of pictures. This is Presque Isle Wesleyan Church in Presque. Isle, Maine. On the bottom, of course, is the picture of the front of their building with the sanctuary. The inside this is their new worship center as it was dedicated a few years ago. And it it became a reality that new worship center because of prayer. Now the pastor of that church in 1986 was Rick Kavanaugh. Rick Kavanaugh came there in 1986, the church that have been around long time for quite a history. You can read about it online. It began with in a schoolhouse that was abandoned, and they moved it to a different site. And they began a church there and some of the beginnings of this, this ministry in Presque Isle, Maine, but now, Rick Kavanaugh now here's just some of the dates and important events that led him to be a person of prayer. In 1986, he came to the church, it was a little church, about 130 people attending regularly. And so he had about six years there. And during that time, it was pretty uneventful as far as the life of a pastor, things just kind of flowed from day to day from place to place, doing this doing that doing all the stuff that comes with pastoring. In 1992, he took stock. And he found that they were down to about 100 people worshiping regularly. And so he thought about that and thought about that and decided that the best thing he could do is to resign his position, and just move on to something else in his life. Maybe another church, maybe not, but found that, you know, his experience there was not leading him to believe that, that God was blessing that union of him in that church at that time. And so he resigned He submitted his resignation to the elders, they accepted it. A few days later, he was in a time of prayer about his future. What am I going to do now? And he felt maybe in a new way, an urging of God, and God kind of prompted him to ask to undo his resignation, to stay at that church not knowing what God was going to do. But he ended up obeying it. He felt like it was an indeed a a prompting of the Holy Spirit. So we went back to the elders and said, You know what, I've been praying. I think God is leading me to undo my resignation, may I? And they said, Yeah, they received him back as pastor. And that's when things began to happen. It was that hearing God speak in that situation, allowed him to hear God's speaking one situation now he began to anticipate it. So he began to pray. Pray more in directly for answers. Shortly thereafter, there was a youth event, something they did every year. They had an attendance at that time of about 200 every year. Invite youth from the community, the church, schools they bombarded the schools with information and they would come in and they they'd have speakers engaged with youth and young people engaging with other young people and they averaged Like I said about 200 kids coming to this thing every year, while they were planning the youth event. And so Rick began to pray about a youth event. And he felt God saying to him, that 30 kids were going to commit their lives to Jesus Christ at that youth event. Well, the day of the youth event came, and they had 470 kids show up. Now remember, they usually got 200. At that time, their worship area wouldn't hold 470 It held about 300. And so they were wondering, what what do we do? Do we cancel? Do we push to just say anybody who's inside gets in, they decided to cram kids in. And so they probably broke every fire code in Presque, Isle, Maine, and they just crammed kids in, they're sitting on the floor, they're standing in the back, they're around on the stage, they're everywhere. At the end of that event, there was an invitation given and exactly 30 Kids came forward, to pray to receive Jesus Christ and commit themselves to his service, and his life in their life. short time after that, he began to gather people within the church who are committed to prayer. And they went off on a prayer retreat for a day. And they prayed that God would bring them people from the north, south, east and west. Now, remember, this is a church that was averaging 50 People in prayer, that next Sunday, there were 50 new visitors. As a result of the prayer, these people went away, just to pray for a day for people to be gathered. So that was 1992. Eleven years later, they were averaging 725 People in worship. And that's why they ended up having to build that new worship center. Now, Rick, of course, kept on developing prayer ministry after that. And in his leadership, here's what it looked like. He said, prayer is the foundation of this church. In fact, they made that a statement, they repeated it often. That Jack Lynn is the one who tells the story of this, this church, in his book, Clear Vision. He says that he asked Rick Kavanaugh, this question he said, "If I were to go to 50 people in your church and ask them, what's the most important thing in your church? What would they say?" And he said, "without a doubt, all 50 of them would say prayer is the most important thing in the life of this church." And here's a listing of the things that happened in their church. There's Highest Priority, which is a Tuesday night prayer meeting goes on for two hours from seven to nine. And it's modeled after the prayer meeting that happens in Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Brooklyn Tabernacle, where there's that night of prayer, which is a phenomenon in itself that you can read about and to learn about, but 125 adults and 75 high schoolers and middle schoolers attend that on average, every Tuesday nights. So they gathered together prayer, prayer is important. It's the most important thing. It's the foundation. He has a group of men does Rick of men in his case, who are praying for him regularly, regularly, they gather with him. They gather with him on Sunday morning before he goes up to preach. They take seriously any requests, he gives them about prayer. They've changed their prayer business meetings. Before that they would have a kind of perfunctory prayer at the beginning saying, you know, God, we're here to do your business, please bless us and guide us, etc. Amen. Instead, they would start sending people off into various parts of the church to pray and say, We want you to determine God's Will said, it really works kind of nice at a congregational meeting, which they still have in his church, that they would be sent off the people with the proposals for the budget for that year descriptions of the ministry. And the first thing they would have to do is spend time in prayer, various places in the building, just together in groups, but also individually to pray is how is God leading us? Do we sense that this is God's will for us at this time, they have within their church sanctuary a cross and anyone can go up to that cross at any time, and nail in a nail. The nails represent people that these people know and love their co workers and their family members, their neighbors, their friends, but they are people who are away from Christ, and they want prayer for this person, so that they might come to faith. And so they'll go up and they will simply nail a cross a nail into that cross and there will be prayer surrounding that by the prayer teams that pray. They have a prayer summit once a year four days 9am to 9pm in the church, and people come and they learn about prayer, and they're trained in prayer. And they have men's and women's prayer teams that pray for men's and women's ministries and Adult Ministries. The staff meets every morning for 30 minutes for prayer. Wow. Just imagine if your ministry your organization, had that kind of prayer backing it up what God would do in opening the windows of heaven to bless your ministry. And so I want to talk in the remainder of my time here just on how do you do that? How do you develop a ministry of prayer in your church? Well, the first thing is to begin with yourself. Are you a person of prayer? Can't remember all I've said in these 35 sessions. But I was challenged with prayer in 1984. That time I was working on a doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. And I was in a class there on church growth. In other words, how do we structure our churches for growth and renewal for getting in touch with the community, etc, etc. In the classroom, there was a group of Koreans, Korean pastors. At that time in Southern California, the Korean church was exploding. In fact, if you had 12 Koreans and put them on a corner, you'd have a thriving church, in no time, it was that kind of experience. And so during one of the breaks, all of them were English proficient. So I was one of the breaks I went to them. And so what's the secret anyway? What's the secret of your growth in the Korean church? And I was hoping, I gotta admit, I was hoping he'd give me some program that I could, you know, buy, and Institute in my church and, and there would there it would grow. But what he did was ask a question, he turned to me and said, What's your prayer life? Like? I said to him that well, I began to describe it. My prayer life was fairly typical for a pastor at that time in the United States, the average pastor in the United States spends nine minutes per day in prayer. And the lay person spends about five or six minutes per day in prayer. So I just started my day in prayer. I began the day with a period of devotions took about five minutes you know, I prayed, after meals, and before meals, we had devotions after our evening meal. And, you know, I prayed with my wife sometimes at night before we went to bed. And so he says, Well, let me tell you about mine said in the Korean church, you are expected to be in your office at 5am. And in our offices, built a prayer closet, right in their office. And they would go into the prayer closet, and they'd spend the first hour of their day praying, praying for God, to empower them praying for the church, to ministry, the people in the church, etc. So then at 6am, I am joined by some other people in the church who who have gathered with me to pray about the needs of the church, etc, we pray from six till seven, then they're off and they go to work, and I go to work in my office. So that's Monday through Thursday, said on Friday, we don't pray in the morning, we come together in the evening, we have dinner, and then we have an evening of prayer, we pray all night. And we pray in shifts, and we pray all night. He said, And then I'm expected at least once or twice per year to go to prayer mountain. Now in Korea, there is actually a mountain that's called Prayer Mountain, and it has all these little booths on it, where people can spend days in there just to reconnect with God in a meaningful way, listening to God. And so once or twice a year, he said, I'll go for a week in order to spend time with God in prayer. And I left that conversation really convicted, he said, this is nothing new. So read about it, read the book of Acts. And so that night I went home, I read through the whole book of Acts, and notice how many times they prayed in fact it became part of my doctoral dissertation that study in the book of Acts, about the prayer life of the fingerprints of God in that early church. Now, that challenged me then to not just think about prayer in general, but my own personal prayer life. I realized, as I said, before, that I didn't know how to pray. I'd grown up, I'd learned how to preach. I'd learned how to study the Bible, I had learned how to be a good church person, but I hadn't learned how to pray. And so I went, and of course, I read the Lord's Prayer. And, you know, I would pray the Lord's Prayer for a while. But then I came across someone in my church who really had the spiritual gift of intercession, we'll talk about that in a moment. And this was a person who had actually emptied one of her closets in her house. And she would go into that, that place and spend two to three hours a day in prayer. And so I met with her and I said, Listen, I've got to learn how to pray. You're somebody who knows this. Teach me and better yet, let's teach others. And so we talked about material. And we decided on a book by Dick Eastman, it's called The Hour That Changes the World. It's still available. But it's it's an old book at this point. But what I appreciated about it, the book was that it was a practical guide to expanding your prayer life. In other words, it didn't just talk about the theory of prayer, or the challenge to pray more, but said, here's a way you can pray more. And he based the idea of an hour in prayer, on Jesus words to His disciples, when he came to them when they were sleeping in the garden. He said, Could you not watch with me one hour? And so he decided to Dick Eastman that he had to learn how to pray for an hour. And so he looked at various facets of prayer, that if we did each of them, five minutes, 12 of them, we'd have an hour of prayer. And so each week, we got together with a group of people who were interested in prayer. And we went through three of them every week and, so over a month We went through these 12 facets of prayer. And then we did it again. And pretty soon it was kind of like a wildfire. I quit teaching the class the woman taught it, the woman who had the gift of intercession taught it. And we had just kind of a prayer revival during that period in the life of our church. And not only that, but the church was growing by leaps and bounds during that period of time. And I have to attribute it to the fact that all of this prayer was happening, and people were praying, not just for themselves, but praying for the church and the ministry. And so The Hour That Changes the World is a simple concept, and I just want to run through it. You may find other resources that are helpful for you, you may be way down the road of prayer much farther than I am. But for some of you, I want to just run through these 12 facets of prayer so that you can get an idea of how you can enrich your prayer life. Now, here's the wheel. You'll notice it starts at the 12 o'clock position with prayer, waiting, a confession of sin, a praying scripture, watching intercession, petitions, Thanksgiving, singing, our contemplation or meditation, or listening to God and then closing with praise, again, bracketed by praise. Now, just a few words about each of those divisions. You begin with praise. That's how Jesus began the Lord's Prayer, right? Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, the word hallowed means wholly separate that, that your name will be lifted up in the world, it's a form of praise, I want your name to be praised, I want you to be lifted up. And so you can begin with praise Now you can choose a variety of subjects to praise God about. And part of learning to pray is to be creative, about finding those things that you can pray about, praise God about. I found times very meaningfully of choosing a color and just praising God for all the ways I see this color in creation. I found praising God for just people I know people I have known people who are leaders in in the past who have had an impact on me just not just thanking God for them, but praising God for what he's done in people's lives. I'm praising God to talk to my accountability partner the other day, and he told me the story about a woman who came to faith who was experiencing oppression of the evil one, she wasn't a Christian. And he got to lead her to faith, even though he didn't speak Spanish. And she didn't speak English. And there was a translator there who led between them, and I can praise God for a new eyes being open to lots of things to praise God for but that's the way we start our prayer is recognizing that God is in heaven, He's our father. He's in heaven. We praise Him for who He is. Then secondly, waiting. Sometimes referred to as soul surrender. The verse I've listed there is one of my favorites, Isaiah 40:31. Isaiah is talking to God is speaking to the people of Israel through Isaiah. And after talking about, you know, Have you not known having not heard about how great God is, it says, gives that wonderful word about "those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not be weary, they will walk and not faint." Now that word hope there is a difficult one to interpret from the Hebrew that it was originally written in. And so some translations say those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. Now the idea of the word there is kind of a twisting together, you can picture taking a pliers and two pieces of wire and twisting them together, or two pieces of string and twisting them together. The idea of waiting is that I bind myself to I twist myself together with God. That's the idea of waiting. I remind myself that everything I have and everything I am belong to God, and I am spending this time connecting with him surrendering myself to him totally and fully. And then on the wheel comes Confession. Confession is nothing more than agreeing with That's what the word confession means. Those who confess their sins, you know, he will forgive their sins and cleanse them from all unrighteousness that's I John 1:9. So I spent time looking at the sins that I've committed that I know are outside the boundaries of God, not just my actions, but my attitudes and my words. And then, you know, there are times I'll ask God, according to the psalmist word, you know, "search me O God and know my heart. Test me try me see if there any anxious thoughts in me lead me in the way of everlasting" some translations state evil thoughts or anything evil in me search me and a moment of quiet to say, Okay, God, what in me, is not what you want. And so there's time in confession, scripture reading. I usually read from the Old and the New Testament, but you can do this however you want, but just spend a few moments reflecting on what Scripture says until you hear God speaking to you through Scripture. And then watching that idea of a mental awareness. Last time I talked about that idea of being a watchman on the tower, where you're looking out to see who's coming Is it a friend or an enemy but to watch to think about the the newspaper articles that you've read the news on TV or in your computer, however you get it and say, Where is God at work where is Satan at work, I'm watching now for the enemy, and I'm going to come against him watching in some of the events in your church, I'm watching what is of the enemy? What's of God and how can I be part of that, then intercession is sometimes called Stepping into the battle on behalf of another person, you're you're taking another person's needs and desires, and you're bringing them to the Lord. Now, I keep a list of these so that I can track when they're answered and how they're answered, and then I can celebrate with God in Thanksgiving as well. But intercession is important to the people you love, in particular, to be lifting them up. This, this can take more than five minutes very quickly, especially if you're interceding for your pastor, or another church leader. If you're interested interceding for certain programs, certain missionaries, this is a time where you can pour your life out on behalf of another person asking God to work and and there are miraculous kind of answers to these kinds of prayers, you know, you read them in the books, where, you know, a missionary is facing a particular challenge, and a sense of these headhunters all around and, and yet they don't attack and later he finds out when he's back in the United States that that night when he was in that place, and these headhunters did not, or these cannibals did not attack him, realize that they're these men praying for him. And later, when the natives came to faith, they said, We didn't attack you because you had the shining men all around you. That kind of thing is happening, because of our prayers. Petition is to pray for personal needs, what are my needs? You know, this morning, I prayed about the fact that I was going to be here taping this session. And I want to do that not in my strength, but in God's strength petition. As well as for the illness, stuff that happens in my life, as well as the challenges that I face. I ask God to help me face these challenges in a meaningful way, and to make my life productive for him. Thanksgiving is just all of those things. One person is listed 1000 of them, I used to keep a list of all the new things that I found to thank God for, you know, like the chuckle of my youngest grandson. He just has this chuckle that I just it just draws me into laughter. And it's a delightful thing. And I thank God for that Thanksgiving, singing, that I can lift up my voice in song because that's a very real thing as you read through the book of Psalms, but to sing a song that is meaningful to me that particular day, three more meditation, that is thinking about spiritual themes. Sometimes it's meditation on a passage in scripture, sometimes it's just meditating on what God is doing in the world. But that I think about some spiritual themes in my life. Meditation has been gotten a bad name, because of the Far Eastern kind of meditation that allows you to empty yourself, a goal of our meditation is not to empty yourself, it's to fill ourselves with God. And so we spend time just thinking, reflecting, letting God lead our thoughts and praying that God will lead our thoughts during that time. And then listening, hearing God speak. Sometimes, you know, you will get an impression that you'll write down, sometimes you'll get guidance that you'll write down. Sometimes God, you know, has to wake us up because we haven't been listening enough. I've had that experience recently where God gave me a direction and I wasn't listening during the day, so. So he woke me up at night and gave me a clear direction through my dreams. So hearing God speak, and then praise which is magnifying God. So you're going to build a prayer ministry, you got to begin with yourself. Then you ask people to pray with you.Now when I read through the Apostle Paul's letters. I'm surprised at how often I find that he asked people to pray for him, to intercede for him because he was engaged in ministry. And I found that important if Paul needed that. I mean, he's somebody who experienced the presence of God before him, liking him to the ground and calling him the ministry revealing things to him supernaturally. If Paul needed people praying for him. I certainly do. And so you can ask for a variety of people to pray for you. Here are some of the things that Paul asked for prayer about. He said, first of all, that prayer would be necessary. He says, In Philippians 1:19. "I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out fine for my deliverance." He's in prison at that time. I know through your prayers, this will turn out for my deliverance. Imagine that. Now God could do that anyway, but it was through their prayers that it was going to happen. People praying for you that when you're facing a difficult situation, that you will be delivered. Joining them in ministry I love the way this is put. He says, "I appeal to you brothers by the Lord Jesus Christ, by the love of the Spirit. strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf." Join me in ministry strive to get it. That's one of the things I would say to my prayer partners that I have today. strive together with me. In other words, I can't do this on my own. I need other people surrounding me in prayer and protecting me in prayer. But But the ministry is yours. In fact, when I had farewell service, the church I was serving for many years, you know, one of the things I did was have prayer partner stand and says, you know, nobody's going to write your name in the history book of this church. But more is owed to you than it is probably to my work. And so prayer that you might have fellowship with the church, Romans 15 says, "Pray that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there so that by God's will, I mean, come to you with joy, and together with you be refreshed." And yeah. Let me have fellowship with the church. Let my experience with church members be rich and full, that I may boldly proclaim the Word. Ephesians. 6:19 he prays for the right words, to share the gospel of Ephesians 6:20 says he might present the gospel without fear that you might communicate clearly Colossians 4:4 and 4:2 that doors might be open for the gospel, etc, that people would be praying for Paul for that, and for deliverance. In those passages listed there, he prays for be to be rescued from unbelievers to be delivered from wicked and evil men. And he later tells the Corinthians that their prayers for him will help deliver him from deadly peril. So all of these things, Paul is requesting prayer. So organize prayer partners for yourself, just ask people who's willing to pray for you on a regular basis. And I said before in a session that you know it helps to have these three levels that level one that people are really intimate with you level two, who gets some information about you. And level three, the general church who has to pray for you and your ministry, because that will serve the church? Well, you have a couple of people in level one, a few more in level two, and level three, and then you communicate prayer requests. I've got a few people in level one that I communicate with quite regularly, a level two, I sent out a letter, an email every week, a woman in our church coordinated that to 30, some prayer partners. And every week, they got this listing of my requests and my calendar for the week. So they might be in prayer for me. And level three, I just say, you know, it's important that you pray for your leaders here. And I encourage everybody on staff to have a leadership team. And then once you've got people praying for you, and you're praying for yourself, then you start going further and you gather people to learn to pray for the church, you gather people who have a spirit of spiritual gift of intercession, there's the definition there, that you can pray for extended periods of time you get greater answers to prayer, you gather them together, you pray together, you brainstorm about what God could do in your church with a greater prayer ministry, you preach about prayer, or you practice prayer together in a variety of settings. You try some things out and you see how God leads you to develop a ministry of prayer. This is essential to you achieving your vision as a leader, if you're going to get to that preferable future that God has called you and the people you are leading to. Prayer has to be a part of it. So enter into covenant to be people of prayer, and God will bless that incredibly. Next time I'm going to give some final thoughts and then you will have completed this class on leadership. See you next time.