This is part two of a four-part series on what helps bring hope in church revitalization ad replanting situations.
“Lord, we aren’t fancy people. We are just simple folk. We don’t know a lot of big words. We don’t have a lot of education. But we love you. And we want our church to live.”
This wasn’t the first prayer we prayed together as a church, but it’s the first prayer I memorized one of our people saying. I remember a couple of things that I learned from that prayer. I remember hearing that, and thinking that it was amazing how those few sentences, spoken simply, but with a sincere heart, carried more weight than any lofty prayer I think I had ever heard. I remember truly believing that the person who prayed this sincerely believed it. I remember, maybe for the first time, feeling the weight of faith that these faithful few people had. And I remember thinking that there was no more appropriate prayer than that one.
Hope travels down the interstate of prayer in churches. A church that is truly saturated in prayer, that is led in prayer, that oozes prayer when you squeeze it in the trials and sufferings of life, is a church that has hope, and a church that can live. If there is a good thing to start with when thinking through revitalization or replanting (or planting, or pastoring, or life for that matter), it must be prayer. Why? Why is prayer so critical? Why does prayer serve as a vehicle for hope? I can think of a few reasons:
1. Prayer reminds the church of the sovereignty of God – the church doesn’t belong to us. Seems obvious when we look at this from a detached, theological perspective. But in the trenches, when traditions are at stake, when all our physical efforts are still falling short, when the numbers keep going down, and the debt keeps going up, we can forget that God cares more about the church than we do. We can forget that God is the one who established His church, who promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. We can forget that it doesn’t all depend on us. Prayer reminds us that God is sovereign, that He is the one who brings life.
2. Prayer reminds the church of the care of God – it’s lonely to be in a small, dying church. We single out congregations that are failing to change, we criticize and ridicule their approaches, we come up with new ideas and new methodologies, and in the meantime these churches, which are made of real people who are really pouring their hearts into what is happening, feel alone. They hurt, and they are afraid, and sometimes they are defensive and angry and stubborn. But so are all of us. In the midst of the reeling, the only real antidote is to lead people to the care of God, and the only consistent way to do that is through prayer. We often need to be reminded that God truly cares. It happens through talking to the God who cares.
3. Prayer reminds the church that God is moving - one of the most amazing things that happened in our church was to see the very unique ways in which God answered prayers. Early on, there is this momentum that is difficult to establish simply because you don’t have enough hands, and the hands you have are worn out from spending so much time carrying a burden that didn’t really belong to them. So, we would pray. When we decided we wanted to start a second Sunday School class, I and another person in the church committed to go to the room we wanted to have the class in, and pray every Sunday morning during the Sunday School hour for God to bring people, so that we would need the class. Slowly, that class started to grow. In the three years since we did that, that class has outgrown three different rooms, and now meets in the fellowship hall because no other room will accommodate it. When we wanted to start a way to reach the addicted in our community, we committed to a month of praying for God to equip our people to do the work, and for God to use it to reach the lost. Countless times, that prayer has been answered. These things happened because we prayed, admitted out helplessness, confessed our need, petitioned His power, and trusted His providence. And then we worked hard. But first, we prayed. And each time, we could see the hand of God at work.
4. Prayer reminds the pastor that he is a servant, not a master – Finally, and this is the most important one for me personally I think, prayer helps make sure the pastor remembers his place in this. There are two different ways the revitalizing pastor can hit a spiritual foul ball. First, he can assume that all the growth and change and the good things that may be happening are because he was somehow clever enough or sufficient enough to bring it about. If it is true that growth happened simply because of the pastor, then it isn’t sustainable or healthy growth. It may be bloating, or swelling, but it isn’t growth. If it is real growth, marked by spiritual health of the people of the church increasing, which in turn leads to greater gospel influence in a community, which then in turn leads to some numerical or financial growth, then God did it. He may, and certainly does, use us to accomplish His purposes, but they are His purposes. Prayer helps us keep this at the forefront of our minds, as we lead with humility, consistently petitioning the Father for His help, His power, His work and will to be done.
The second foul ball is the other end of the spectrum. When we have worked and been faithful, and growth hasn’t happened, or it isn’t happening at the pace we would like, we can start to feel solely responsible for this. This also is simply untrue. God calls us to faithfulness, not success. There is a difference between those two, and one does not immediately and automatically lead to the other. Prayer reminds us of this, as we lean on God to do His work, trusting His power.
When you put these together, you end up with a picture of how biblical hope comes into the life of a church. Think about it: when a congregation trusts in the sovereignty of God, rests in the care of God, anticipates a movement of God, and is led by men who believe that they are truly servants of God, the focus changes from a man-centered view to a God-centered one. The faith of the saints is increased, the expectations of the people start to become more biblical, and hope is soon to come. Prayer brings hope. It sustains hope. It serves as a catalyst for hope. And it’s something every person in a congregation, no matter how old or young, can and ought to do.
And the best prayers are often the most simple.
I’m praying for you, friend. Maybe you are in a church where hope is gone, and prayer has been relegated to a series of aches and pains recounted on a weekly list. I pray that you will seek to confess and request the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, that you will be enflamed with the need to speak with God about who He is and what He has done more than you want to simply ask Him to do things. I pray that our churches will hang all our hopes on the reality that God is pleased to move through the prayers of the saints. I pray that God will move in the hearts of us pastors to remind us that our agenda should be to pray and lead others to pray. I pray that our souls are restored by this.
In other words, I pray that even though you may not be fancy people, who don’t know all the big words, that you would love Christ, and want your churches to live.
Pray, friends. Simple, powerful prayers.
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