PRAY THE CHURCH ROLL

I have been thinking about writing a book on prayer in a church family. My working, or maybe thinking, title is Praying Together. I can get excited about it, but I am not sure I will get to it. I want to write two more books before I start it. And my time is limited. So I want to set some of the ideas out to you in my blog.

Our church is in a difficult place right now. We are without a pastor. And for this and other reasons my wife and I have felt we need to pray as we have never prayed before. In fact, I believe churches all over the world need to sense and respond to this urgency. This week my wife suggested that we go to the church one morning and pray through the church roll. Our reasoning for doing this had nothing to do with the experience. But we were both blessed by our time in prayer. We intend to do this regularly and invite some others to join us. I was still a young pastor when God began to convict me to pray through our church roll Every day. Many pastors and church leaders are so blessed with church members that you would need to divide up the roll up into sections to pray for each day. I know you are busy.  But prayer is important. You might even break up your study and other work during a day to pray ten minutes every hour or so. I try to do that with my writing. I believe this, along with a weekly Sabbath, has kept me from burn-out over the years.

But none of these things are actually what I would like to see. What I long for begins with individuals and couples praying for the church body. But I would like something that includes more people. I would like to see deacons and elders, staff members, teachers and leaders commit to spend time every day praying for our church families. I would like to see it spread like wildfire through a church body.

Is that all the prayer that I think we need? Absolutely not. But I believe God might use something as simple as this to begin a movement that would shake a nation to its knees and touch the entire world.

http://thinkinginthespirit.blogspot.com/

http://watchinginprayer.blogspot.com/

http://writingprayerfully.blogspot.com/

http://daveswatch.com/