Why we canned our Prayer Meeting

 

Sometimes churches are in danger of becoming museums or mausoleums rather than a place where the life of God fills and spills out of. We get so caught up with defending and propagating our systems, our “holy cows”, “it’s just how we’ve always done it” way of thinking that we become not so different to the manufacturers of caskets who spend thousands of rands and countless hours in fashioning out elaborate handles, felt inner linings and ornamental outer decorations that we forget that all that these glorified boxes are doing is containing death.

 

Our homes can become like this as well. We break the bank in buying the new flat-screen, the latest leather lazy-boy, lavish new carpets and mini fridges fully stocked and the only people who get to enjoy them are people who have removed their shoes at the door, who place their glass on a coaster and who make polite conversation around why we should upgrade our hi-fi system. They look good, but are lifeless in terms of kingdom benefit.

Same with our cars.

Same with our churches.

A few years ago, we at Life Changers decided that it was time to take out our shot-gun and get the braai ready as we prepared to take down one of christendoms plumpest holy cows. The prayer meeting.  Phrases such as “you judge the size of your church by the size of your prayer meeting”, “your prayer meeting is the engine room of your church” and “we’ll cancel Sunday before we cancel our prayer meeting” made us all weary to ever even consider tampering with this midweek meeting. Sure we could shake things up every now and again (pray in pairs and not just in groups of four or five) but this was one closed-handed issue that seemed as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar itself.

 

But after quite a dry spell of poorly attended (by our people and of faith and life) Tuesday prayer meetings , we courageously pulled the plug on this meeting to the sound-track of anger and shock from many voices at home and from a far. But just to show you that we are not heretical, and that this was a faith inspired assassination and not just because of a lack of attendance, here below are some of the reasons why we canned our midweek prayer meeting.

We want to be less busy

-We gather on a Sunday and on a Wednesday already on top of other social and outreach moments. We never want to be a busy church that is so consumed with meetings that it forsakes what the church should really be doing. We wanted to free up an extra night for people to be with their families, to join a tennis club or to invite other people over to their homes.

We want to be hungrier

-The same people at prayer meeting were the same people at everything else. And they were tired. Doing away with the prayer meeting got us thinking about how we could get more people praying. We had to ask ourselves the hard questions that we had so often just skirted around with dogmatic statements about prayer that we had just inherited.

We want revival

-Probably our greatest trump card for drawing the season of a formalised midweek prayer meeting was because we heard God say so.  We couldn’t help get away from the fact that even though we had an hour dedicated to corporate prayer each week, we were not a praying church. Ever since we closed it down, people are gathering off their own bats, in smaller informal gatherings, to pray and worship together, sometimes into the early hours of the morning. Since Tuesday nights of prayer came to an end, we have begun a journey of corporately fasting and praying in unique ways that have released the life of God like we haven’t seen before. Prayer is starting to become the language of our home groups. God spoke, we acted, and life has come back to our prayer expression as a community.

 

We don’t have the full answers. We are still learning. We might even go back to a weekly prayer meeting into the future. God will highlight his strategy as we continue to pray...

All we keep reminding ourselves about is that our God is not a God of a set of formulas that need to be followed for his life to come. We love to pray because it helps serve as a catalyst to seeing the life of God released more and more in our lives. We don’t want to be so present and pursuing the right ingredients, that we actually end up missing His presence. We applied this to our prayer lens. We want this to be the measuring stick of everything in our lives. 

 

A coffin has a body, but contains no life.

 

Your roots Are Showing (Part Two)

This last fortnight’s series, “Your Roots Are Showing”, has been an incredible journey and defining period for us as a community of faith as we have dug down a little deeper into the very root system of who we are. Beginning with God’s original intent of intimacy, influence and inheritance found in our primary texts of Genesis 1 and 2, we then finished week one in chapter 3 of the book  of beginnings where our devine DNA and desires was distorted by the second preacher to become weaker and yet still controlling passions for sex, sleep and success.

Week two saw us launch into Acts 2 as we rapidly glanced at how this thing we call church was birthed. Contrary to popular belief, the church was not launched after much deliberation by grey haired men in stuffy windowless rooms surrounded by piles and piles of doctrine and creeds.

No, the church that the gates of hell will not prevail against, was birthed in fire and drunkenness that took weak, fearful men and women out of hiding in a second story room and onto the streets of Jerusalem with utmost courage.

We also see from this passage that the Holy Spirit was poured out not for feel good, bless me club meetings but for the mission! To give weak, cowardly people like us a boldness and power that is not of our own but that would be used also not for our own fame but the fame of another. Which brought us to our landing point: The church was birthed for Jesus.

What began in Genesis.2:7 with a kiss will culminate in a wedding. Jesus is coming back for a bride, His bride! We believe that this whole thing called humanity and creation was a glorious setup for Christ to be glorified. And as John Piper writes, “God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in Him”. Or as the ancient creed says, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”

These are our roots. And as we said often over the last couple of weeks, our roots determine our routes. What began with Christ will end with Christ.

He is our proclamation.

He is our preoccupation.

Our roots are showing more and more, and our routes have never looked more exciting!

http://www.lifechangers.org.za/sermons/your-roots-are-showing/

A Zimbabwean Adventure (Part One)

Over the last two weeks I have ended each day closing my eyes in seven different beds, in 6 different cities and towns , including one very restless night on a cold, hard floor in Chinoyi. As I write this particular blog in my own warm bed in Cape Town tonight, the memory of the +-90 hours in a car, back of a bakkie or squashed amongst music equipment and baggage as we travelled close on 6000kms already seems a distant memory. The hundreds and hundreds of people that we spoke to, hugged, touched, prayed for, preached to, worshiped with, played with, fed and clothed seem light years away as I draw my curtains on a quiet Tableview cul de sac. The amount of speakers, cables, guitars, drums and the like that were loaded onto bakkies, offloaded, carried into rural settings, plugged in, fixed, tweaked, restrung, equalized, unplugged, carried and loaded back onto bakkies (often in the dark with the only light being from a solitary torch or cellphone) are mainly brought to mind as I casually switch on and off my television, kettle and bathroom light.

The dust, the sweat, the tears, the seemingly endless hours at the Beit bridge border have come and gone and life returns to a much more comfortable and normal hum drum pace.

Or was the last fortnight a small taste of what life really could and should be like?

"O God, rip from me a desire for comfort, a desire for mere earthly pleasures, a continual craving for worldly treasures. Whether on foreign soil or daily-chore-bound, let the memory of Christ’s passion burn brighter and brighter still"

(Check out the next few blogs for Stories from our time in Zimbabwe)

A normal day

Another defining moment during my three year stint at the Durban university was on a normal day when a friend and I felt strangely emboldened and went on a mini healing crusade during one of our seemingly endless free periods. Anyone that looked remotely sick or of a fragile disposition was moved in on at a rapid pace. After a few colds and headaches that were swiftly dealt with, as well as a slightly bemused guy’s broken leg healing in front of our eyes, our courageous faith mission for the day became an unstoppable Gospel agenda in our hearts as we became almost rabid to see the ill healed! What happened next though (as if the preceding miracles weren’t impressive enough) was something that I have held onto as a lifechanging moment ever since.

We had found ourselves by the Student Union buildings when a young gentleman approached us and asked if we were the guys praying for the sick people. We looked at each other excitedly as we realised that the word had spread. After affirming that what he said was true, he beckoned us to follow him up several flights of stairs, down a corridor and into the very heart of that particular building. Without another word spoken, he stopped outside a closed door, took off his shoes and motioned us to do the same. In a similar fashion, we removed our footwear and followed him into the dimly lit room. As our eyes adjusted to the light (or lack there of),  I became aware of several hindu students kneeling in corners, muttering almost silent prayers while desperately clasping beads of some sorts. Amongst them were golden statues, posters adorned with sacred mantras, and smouldering incense sticks. Unwittingly (for us) we had stumbled into the Bhakti Yoga Society’s head quarters! This was the mother load!

Our pied piper who had lead us thus far, spoke up for the first time since our first exchange outside. “This girl is anaemic. It’s bad. Can you pray?” The girl in question looked up nervously. In normal circumstances, a situation like this would be somewhat nerve-wracking for me. This was no Sunday morning church meeting where a Christian had come up to the front for prayer. Here we had walked straight into the enemy’s camp and by any casual observer we looked like fish out of water. But as I said, this day seemed different. It just didn’t feel like a normal day.

Not waiting for my logic or rationale to catch up, I looked at this young girl and asked her two questions. Did she want to be healed and was she alright for me to ask Jesus for that healing? She nodded in agreement to both. We laid our hands on her and prayed very simple prayers that I can’t even remember. I wasn’t even too sure what the full implications of being anaemic meant! But what I did know for sure was that my God was good. Maybe a bit iffy on what the disease was, a tad so-so on what to pray, but I was pretty confident in His willingness and ability to show His kindness!

Nervously, we opened our eyes. She opened hers. And down the tears rolled over her face and onto the floor. To this day I won’t forget her words, “What power is in your hands to make me feel this way?” As we preceded to explain that it was not us but the love of a Father who was desperate for her, I realised that this was not a place to fear. This was very rightly a holy place.

After we left the room, put our shoes back on and walked bemused back into the sunshine outside, my friend casually asked me if I knew what I had been doing while I had been praying with my eyes tightly shut. I answered in the negative. “Bud, you had your whole weight leaning on a statue of a hindu God!”

This was by no means a normal day.

Or maybe, just maybe, this             is                 what             normal            really           looks            like.

Tozer's Prayer

"Save me from the error of judging a church by it's size, it's popularity or the amount of it's yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet-
not a promoter,
not a religious manager,
but a prophet!
Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity.

Save me from bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay your terror upon me, O God, and DRIVE ME TO THE PLACE OF PRAYER WHERE I WRESTLE WITH PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS AND RULERS OF THE DARKNESS OF THIS WORLD.
Deliver me from over-eating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline so that I may be a good soldier of Christ Jesus...

And now, O Lord of Heaven and earth. I consecrate my remaining days to you; let them be many or few, as you will. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and i wouldn't influence it if i could. I am your servant
TO
DO
YOUR
WILL.
and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame and I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven."

A Prayer of AW Tozer...

...and now a prayer of mine

A wake up call

A Chinese pastor visited America to have exposure to the way church was being run in the Western world in order to gain lessons in how to do things better back home. After a week of being shown the huge new building projects, the high-tech multi-media systems, the attractional programs and events that drew thousands and the great, new communication strategies for preachers, he was asked what his greatest thing he learnt had been. And this was his answer;
"I am amazed and in awe of all the incredible results the Church in the Western world are achieving without prayer and the Holy Spirit."

If the Holy Spirit left the Church alone, alot of it would just carry on,
business as usual.

It is my strongest prayer that this would not be said of yours and my life!