A couple of days ago I sat down with Liz A., who is the Global Prayer Strategist for Mission to Unreached Peoples. We were talking in part about the fact that movements are built on top of extraordinary prayer–this is one of the ten universals of a church planting movement (CPM).
How “extraordinary prayer” is defined will obviously differ from person to person and organization to organization. However, this much seems clear: if you want a CPM, you have to have prayer–and prayer that goes beyond “ordinary” or “typical” prayer habits.
We’re still talking about what that would look like. One aspect of it is that any given organization (like ours) needs a very good way for exchanging items to pray for–prayer requests.
If you don’t know what needs to be prayed for, you won’t pray for it. So it seems that the first step in “extraodinary prayer” is some system (technological or otherwise) for telling people about prayer needs. Some of the people with whom we’ll share requests are inside our agency. Others are outside our agency.
There’s all sorts of issues involved in this: the time it takes and security being two of the largest.
Right now, MUP doesn’t have as good a way of doing this as we would like. So, I’m exploring some of the technological part of a potential solution.
GEM has already written me to tell me about an in-house solution they use. Do you have an in-house solution to exchange prayer requests within your agency or church? If so, would you describe it in comments below–or write me at justinlong@gmail.com?
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Justin, bless your heart!! Go for it!! Here’s some further thought about “extraordinary prayer” for you and your readers: If we believe, and I think we do, that we will surely reproduce what we model, then we must not only mobilize and train others to join us in praying, but we ourselves have to develop a conversational relationship with Jesus as a lifestyle. What is prayer but a ongoing conversation, two-way, with our Heavenly Father, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Listening is a difficult skill to master, even in conversations between two people. So, not too surprising that it’s also difficult with our Heavenly Father. How can we grow in listening to Him and not just spouting off about what we think He ought to be doing to solve our problems, remove our difficulties, and provide for our every want and need? What about asking Him what’s on His mind at any given moment? Friends listen to friends, don’t they? How much more when we believe that He is the wisest person in the universe? Might be smart to curl up at His feet and just ask Him to talk to you–and remember to take notes. He might actually speak!! Then, what!! Hopefully we’d be really quick to obey whatever He showed us! That’s another story….