August, 2018
Greetings,
One of prayer links desires is to establish an idea of just where we are in the SBC prayer life. For the most part of every pastor, church and Christian their statement is, 'I know I should pray'; 'I know I ought to pray more'. and when prayer the prayer life is questioned, there are those that immediately become defensive and their statement, 'I pray'. So this is an attempt to answer the question, 'Are we praying?' And if so, 'how are we praying?' How can we improve that prayer life? How can we pray so as to prevail?
For there are numerous billions on the planet that pray each day. These are religious prayers. Prayers that are offered to a false god, and fall on no ears to hear. This is praying in vain. And there are those that know of Christ, and they pray, especially in the emergency conditions; yet, God has said, 'I will not hear you'. These are those that are religious as well, in the Christian churches today, but they have no relationship with the Father nor the Son, and just as the Pharisees prayed, but to no avail, so do these religious prayers. They are vanity.
We are not seeking to search out the depths of this, that is impossible. But we are seeking to gain some perspective of what the average SBC pastor, church and laymen's prayer life looks like. And out of this culmative gathering, we may be able to see where we need to go and how better we can help the prayer lfie of the SBC.
Identify the target group:
Pastor; Church and Christian laymen
Identify the time frame employed in prayer:
Daily; Weekly; Monthly; Annually;
Identify the Topics prayed for:
This falls in to two groups to better identify just what we are praying for and praying against --
Physical requests and concerns; Spiritual requests and concerns;
Suggested Prayer Survey:
Personal/Individual Prayer
1. Do you have an established set time of private prayer?
--How often do you pray?
--How much time do you spend in prayer?
--What topics do you bring before the Lord? top 3 or 5;
The purpose of this question is to identify the sin of prayerlessness among the SBC. It would also seek to begin to demonstrate what the prayer life actually looks like for individuals.
2. Do you pray with any one else during the week or month? If so, who and how often and what topics are prayed for?
Often this will be a prayer partner or small group. The purpose of this question should be to see if there is any that is an Aaron and/or Hur holding up Moses, the pastors hands to do ministry effectively for the Lord. It would also show spiritaul growth and accountability for Christians on the personal level.
Small group/church
1. How regularly does your group meet for prayer?
2. When and if they meet what are the topics of prayer? How much time is allotted for actual prayer time? This would not include devotion, discussion or sharing lists; but the actual time spent in prayer.
Too often we have heard and found that there is 20 minutes in listing the prayer requests, but only 3-5 minutes spent in prayer.
How much time and/or focus is spent on the following prayer topics:
--worship; Not the music component of worship, but the actual prayer theme of adoration, praise, attributes, Names of God; thanksgiving;
--confession; not just the general sense of confessing, 'Lord, I have sinned.' but the specifics of naming our sins before the Lord. Intent, deeds, sins of commission, sins of omission;
--petitions; physical and/or spiritaul;
--kingdom focus; What are these topics? How do you pray for them? souls/missions/nations/spiritual warfare;
--intercession;
this is a very rough outline of approaching leaders, pastors, churches and asking of them to dialogue about prayer and their prayer life. Seeking to understand where we are in our mindset of prayer; and just what we are actually doing in prayer. This should give us a general sense of how to proceed to deepen and grow the prayer life of the SBC.
Simply giving out a paper/email likely will not cover what we are looking for. Time will have to be spent with indivdual pastors, leaders to talk about the prayer life that they see and are aware of.
Scale of pre-conceived notions of the SBC prayer life:
1. To see the prayer life of Brooklyn Taberancle is a blessed church that prays. The opposite end of a praying church is a church that does not pray, corporately or privately. I believe that the numeric percentage of SBC churches and members is over 80% do not have a weekly hour of corporate prayer; and many of those members of SBC churches have no prayer life.
2. We sing, or used to sing, 'Sweet Hour of Prayer'. Where there is a group you would think it an easy thing to pray for an hour, allowing for each to participate. But I would say that out of our over 40,000 church you would be hard pressed to find a church that prays monthly/weekly for an hour together. An individaully, the remnant prays such; but the majority of the body of Christ would be more like 10 minutes of focused, spiritual prayer. Quick and hurried and not much detail. And defintiely not a two sided communication; they speak, but they rarely give God time to speak.
3. Understanding the depth of our sin of prayerlessness is not easy. Many do not want ot discuss or consider this; but this is the reason that the SBC church, families and individuals are where they are today.
Until,
dan
Started: August 7, 2018
Continued:
Finished:
No comments:
Post a Comment