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.