Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Mar/89

Contributor - Murray Moerman

Title - Prayer and Church Growth

Topic - Church Growth

Some readers will consider the relationship between prayer and church growth to be obvious: leaders and people who pray for church growth will see God grow their church. Others, who pray regularly for the growth of their church but have seen little of it, may not be so sure.

What is the relationship between prayer and church growth?

1. Prayer indicates the degree to which we are aligning ourselves with God's ultimate purpose.

God wants His lost children to be found and His church to grow. God's entire plan of redemption centres on this truth, which is nearest to His heart. Because God cares for the lost, He desires us to care also.

Jesus reminds us that where our treasure is, our heart will be also (cf. Matthew 6:21). That is to say: that which is really important to us will also draw our hearts to persistent prayer.

Therefore, we may measure the degree of our nearness to the concerns of God's heart, by the degree to which our hearts are taken up with the priorities of God in prayer.

Our churches will not grow if we do not pray for growth. Jesus said: "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" (Matthew 9:38). In a way that we don't fully understand, God's harvest is related to our prayer. Churches that don't pray for growth, in most cases, simply don't grow.

2. Growing Churches make Prayer a Priority.

Research increasingly links growing churches with prayer. Growing churches have goals, are organized, have strong leadership and a mobilized laity, true. Few growing churches are without these characteristics. But goals and good organization can produce only a limited amount of growth.

What does significant growth require? Prayer, and lots of it.

Dr. C. Peter Wagner has been researching the relationship of prayer to growth of late and this is something of what he has found:

1. Leaders of growing churches have learned how to pray.

In a Christianity Today poll taken in 1982, North American pastors indicated that they personally prayed an average of 15 minutes per day.

When Dr. Wagner repeated the poll five years later he found, in a sample of 572 respondents slightly biased towards evangelical pastors, the average time of personal prayer had risen to 22 minutes per day. In a further refinement, he found that Pentecostal and charismatic pastors invested an average of 46 minutes per day in personal prayer, compared to 17 minutes per day for other pastors.

The North American church, as a whole, is growing at only a very moderate rate in comparison with the rate of growth of the general population.

Dr. Wagner goes on to compare the daily amount of prayer invested by church leaders in other nations.

In Japan the daily prayer time of pastors averages 44 minutes. In South Korea the average pastor invests 90 minutes per day in prayer. The church in Korea, at the turn of the century, was virtually non-existent. Today revival continues, and the largest church in the world for eight denominations is found in Korea. The total church represents nearly 35% of South Korea's population. Compare that to Canada where, 300 years after the introduction of the gospel, church attendance still does not exceed that percentage and a national revival has never swept our land.

In the Chinese 'house church' movement, leaders invest an average of two hours per day in personal prayer. Most observers consider the Chinese house church movement to be the most amazing and rapidly growing voluntary religious movement in history.

2. God is raising up intercessors world-wide for growing churches, movements and their leaders.

Paul Yonngi Cho, pastor of the largest church in history, prays an average of 3 to 5 hours a day. Larry Lea, author of Could You Not Tarry with Me One Hour?, invests an average of 3 hours a day in prayer. Evelyn Christenson, author of What Happens When Women Pray, has a ministry of intercession to which she devotes 2 to 4 hours of prayer per day.

Some will be quick to point out that such gifts of intercession are relatively rare and that we should avoid any 'gift projection' requiring such extraordinary prayer of leaders who have not been given such gifts. This is true of course.

Nevertheless God desires to use such extraordinary prayer to release the power of His Kingdom for redemption on earth. How will He do so?

It appears that God is raising up intercessors out of the ranks of those who have not been called to organizational leadership as such, and equipping them to pray in a focused way for specific Christian leaders and organizations.

Thousands of such quiet, unsung heroes and heroines of the Kingdom, are serving in spiritual warfare to provide the prayer power for the growth of the church.

3. Prayer for the Growth of the Church can be Organized.

Many churches for whom prayer is important, structure times of prayer into their weekly schedule to encourage the release of God's power for growth.

Until a decade ago, Wednesday night prayer meetings were, in most churches, the only structured congregational encouragement for prayer. That pattern is rapidly changing.

Korean churches hold 5:00 a.m., 5:30 a.m. or 6:00 a.m. prayer meetings 365 days a year. In this decade, hundreds of North American churches are following, at least in part, the lead of their South Korean counterparts in holding early morning prayer meetings two, three, or five days a week.

While on vacation, I visited a small Canadian church on the west coast which meets for early prayer Tuesday through Saturday mornings. That small church, in all likelihood, will not remain small long.

Other churches structure specific focus prayer meetings: some prayer times are specifically for healing, others for revival, and others for leaders, or a particular program of the church.

Some churches seek to organize at least some of the intercessors of their church to pray all through each of the worship services of the church. Those intercessors pray for the pastor as he preaches, the Sunday School teachers and their classes, and for unbelievers to come to faith and permanent commitment during the service.

Larry Lea is seeking to encourage the prayer life for the American church by enlisting 300,000 Christ ans (1% of the American population to pray an hour a day for the coming of the Kingdom of God. So far no Canadian is attempting to do the same for Canadian Christians, but should God raise up such an organizer, the result of 30,000 Canadians praying an hour a day for the growth of the Kingdom of God in Canada would have powerful effects.

What Can We Do?

Some of us, as we read of these evidences of a vital movement of prayer God is bringing to His church, may feel we do not know how to relate to such radically new patterns. How can we deepen our own prayer lives and encourage the prayer life of our church for growth?

1. We can begin by increasing the time of our personal prayer. We may not feel we have a personal gift for intercession enabling us to pray for lengthy periods of time each day. Nevertheless we can commit ourselves to taking the next step towards learning to give a 'tithe' of our day to spiritual warfare in prayer. If we are not praying appreciably, we may begin with five minutes a day and feel good about it. If we are praying five minutes, we may increase that to twenty minutes or more on our way to learning to pray an hour a day. Larry Lea's book, Could You Not Tarry with Me One Hour?, offers very helpful guidelines for using the outline of the Lord's Payer to structure an hour of personal prayer.

2. We can strengthen or add to the prayer structures our church has in place. Perhaps a prayer group could be started or revitalized. Perhaps a friend with a similar concern would covenant with you to meet for prayer at a specific time and place and others could be invited to join with you.

3. We might ask our church board to evaluate the prayer life of the congregation and suggest ways to strengthen it.

4. We can commit ourselves to pray specifically for the growth goals of the church and for the programs established to reach those goals and the people working in those areas.

Goals prayed for persistently are goals achieved. Our prayer needs to be, not only general, but focused prayer for the growth of God's Kingdom.

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