Our town newspaper has requested that a minister from town submit articles to the newspaper every Thursday.Some write once or twice a month and some for a whole month. I have taken it upon myself to write each June. So in addition to Blogging at Synod I was writing for the paper. I would like to share those articles with you. So I, will post them over the next few weeks.
House of Prayer: Part I - June 4, 2009
Jesus said, “My house will be called a house of prayer.” (Matthew 21:13)
Now while I understand that Jesus was in the temple when He said this, most Christians call the churches or places of worship “God's house.” So, my questions is simple. Is it true? Is your place of worship a House of Prayer?
I think sadly for most of us the answer is a very quick, “No.” And while some of us may have grown up with a weekly prayer service, most of us may be very uncomfortable going to a prayer meeting, praying in public, or even lead fellow believers in prayer. Over the next four weeks I want to challenge the faith community of Brookings to begin making changes that will make Jesus' statement true.
Why prayer? Why now? If we were to take a look at church history, we see clearly that great movements in the faith, follow great times of prayer. Both the great awakening and the second great awakening follow on the heals of a small group beginning what becomes a prayer movement. We live in a down economy and a global world that faces global issue never before seen. The church in north America is in continued decline, while people are hungry for spiritual things.
My focus on prayer has been growing in the past six months. It really began a little over a year ago when I heard Reggie McNeal tell how he asks his waitress/waiter if they have any prayer requests, or how could he ask God to bless them, when he is going to bless his meal. I kept wanting to try it but it never really felt like me. And I really didn't want to come across as phony.
I kept trying to see how I could change the idea to be mine, but it didn't really happen until earlier this year when I got to see Reggie again at another conference. This time he again shared about praying for wait staff, but he also talked about praying for your community. He challenged us to go throughout your community and praying “God help me see what You see.”
I came back and eagerly tried it. After all, I could do it without anyone knowing I was doing it. Since I did that, I have been continually re-visioning the way that I pray. I see God leading me to find new ways and new opportunities to be in prayer. I want to just share one of them with you this week.
The Brookings Ministerial Association (BMA) meets on a monthly basis. At a meeting earlier this year I shared a desire to create a VBS communication chart. It would be useful to help churches know who was doing VBS on which dates and with what program. The reason I suggested it was since I had found that three churches last summer had the same program the same week. This tool would be to help those who wanted to be informed before making a decision.
Recently, I had a conversation with one of the members of our VBS team that was seeking to create a prayer team to prayer for our own VBS. In the midst of discussing the various ways in which we may want to do so, I had what I call a God moment. You know when an idea suddenly enters your mind that really feels like it is beyond you. Well, the thought was what if instead of just praying for ourselves we prayed for every VBS.
As I shared the idea, it was clear to us that we needed to do this. The more we talked about how we were going to do this the more excited we got. The next thing I did was e-mail the BMA with the idea. And again the response was, yes, of course we should do this. And while each of our churches may select different ways to organize the prayer plan, there are as of now nine churches committed to praying for each other on each day that we have VBS in Brookings. Four of those churches are conducting VBS this week. What a great start.
While we are not yet there, my hope is that over the next month you may begin to seek more and more to ways to begin to make true what Jesus said. So that, if someone where to ask you about what your faith community is like, you might answer them by saying, “It is a house of prayer.”