Last week’s post, The Kind Of Prayer That Downloads Church Revitalization, Part One, focused on five, big, surprising conclusions on the subject of church revitalization.
The best way to reintroduce my subject might be to reintroduce myself. I began attending and fell in love with a small evangelical church at age twenty, one year after my conversion. Another year later found me thoroughly involved in this congregation, attending three or four church events per week, teaching children, and helping with a church bus route.
For much of the time I was there I was the only young single guy. It didn’t occur to me that I needed to go find a “young singles church;” the folks in my church family were my spiritual aunts, uncles and grandparents.
Suddenly – or at least for me it was suddenly – the church split in two after a nasty public meeting. I was deeply grieved by what our “church family” was doing to the reputation of God and the gospel. I didn’t drop out, but, by the grace of God, I got more involved than ever and I started thinking deeply about what we would later call “church health.”
My abiding interest in church health turned into a quest for the secrets to church revitalization. That led to fifteen years of church-health oriented interim pastorates, a denominational church health position and six years of church health consulting.
With that said, here are the five surprising conclusions about church revitalization which I shared last week, including most of what I said about #5, followed by a few more thoughts about the kind of prayer that leads to the infusion of new life from heaven.
(1) The kind of church revitalization we really want is what we used to call “revival.”
(2) Best practices do have a part to play in church revitalization.
(3) Pastoral leadership does have a part to play in church revitalization.
(4) Church “health” – largely a matter of relationships between the members – has a part to play in church revitalization.
(5) The right kind of prayer is the most important factor in church revitalization.
If you see prayer as being the hardest thing to motivate your congregation to do then, admittedly, I’ve just told you what you didn’t want to hear.
But here’s why this is extraordinarily good news: First of all, serious, revitalization-downloading prayer does not require great intelligence, learning or skill. Secondly, the kind of prayer I’m going to describe below puts all of us, regardless of the size or resources of our churches, on the same level.
The campus group that led me to Christ had next to nothing by way of earthly resources: no building, no band and a part-time leader with an old house the group met in weekly. What they did have was Jesus Christ, Bibles, each other and the blessing of God. The result was a powerful, life-changing ministry.
The Savior who makes his presence known in a powerful way in the mega-church is just as willing to make his presence known in the mini-church (Matthew 18:20, Revelation 3:20, Ephesians 3:17).
Here are the three quotations and my own conclusion which I left you with last week:
The church that balances the winning, building, and equipping involved in making disciples, experiences the manifest power and presence of Christ. (Paraphrase of Dr. Dann Spader, author of “Growing A Healthy Church,” and, with Gary Mayes, “The Everyday Commission” )
“Revival is having Jesus Christ, obviously present and actively in charge of your church.” (Oliver Price, author of “Pray With Christ”)
“I like to relate to a church, small or large, that if they have Jesus, they have everything they need to be all that God intended for them to be.” (Joe Humrichous, author of “Lead Pastor” and “The Vine And The Church”)
The right kind of prayer is the most important factor in church revitalization.
Here’s a little more detail regarding THE RIGHT KIND OF PRAYER:
(a) The right kind of prayer acknowledges the rightful place of Christ in His church. We can’t expect to have Jesus “obviously present” if we’re not endeavoring to have him “actively in charge.” I have a strong suspicion that the church leaders who were praying and fasting in Acts 13:1-4 we’re wide open to however the Spirit of Christ would lead them – and he did lead them! Is this what it means to truly have a “Christ-centered” church?
(b) The right kind of prayer admits to the futility of a prayerless ministry. John 15:5 still says, “without me, you can do nothing.” A teacher I had in seminary hated the phrase, “services as usual.” He insisted that we should be praying for “unusual services, not services as usual.” Should we be content with “quality” services – and where did we get the term “services” anyway? – when what we really need is Christ’s manifest presence and power?
(c) The right kind of prayer acknowledges the difference between having Christ in a church and having Christ filling a church. I’m not talking about a “second blessing” experience; I am talking about having the blessing of being filledwith the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) as opposed to merely being indwelt with the Spirit.
My experience of being filled (controlled & empowered) as an individual Christian hinges on my faith and submission. Should we expect it to be any different for our congregations? Do we want Christ merely in our churches or do we want him settling down and being comfortably “at home” among us (the implication of Ephesians 3:17), as well as sitting down and dining with us in all his glory and power (the implication of Revelation 3:20)?
(d) The right kind of prayer Involves persistence, a willingness to “wait on the Lord,” which means keeping at it until we experience I Corinthians 14:24,25: the unbeliever walking into our midst and sensing something powerful and supernatural, or maybe Acts 4:31: the prayer meeting that leads to the shaking of our building and bold testifying on the part of the saints.
How long do we have to pray for this? Since God hasn’t told us how many hours we have to “put in,” we should be willing to keep asking for the blessing of Christ’s obvious presence until it’s obvious that we have it. This doesn’t mean that we have to close our church doors until it happens; when we’re not praying we can put feet to our prayers by doing the kind of outwardly focused disciple-making ministry that we’re longing for God to bless.
(e) The right kind of prayers might be sung as well as said. There’s a strong connection between real prayer and real worship in song. Many of our best songs – both old and new – eloquently express our hearts’ desires for Christ and his blessings: “I need thee, Oh! I need thee!” “I’m desperate for you; I’m lost without you.” “Give us clean hands; give us pure hearts!”
This means that in most any church, we can punctuate our prayers with prayerful songs and in many churches, we need only to get serious and conscious about the wonderful words we’re already singing.
The right kind of prayer is the most important factor in church revitalization.
Do you want a revitalized church?
Are you willing to pray the right kind of prayers?
