Ye olde Prayer Walk

What happened to the old fashioned way of getting the job done. Pray hard, and get out there on the streets and see what happens.

Maybe I’ve gone a bit soft over the years, or maybe I haven’t been listening keenly enough, or maybe I just haven’t been listening to the right preachers… but I don’t remember hearing a lot of talk from too many pulpits recently on getting down and dirty (the knees that is) in the prayer closet, or in fact, what is just as important, and sometimes more so… good old prayer walking.

Charles Wesley used to do it, DL Moody used to do it. Many of the greats of church history used to do it, spending countless hours wandering the streets praying for their communities.

And today, we seem to have forgotten all about it. (or at least I had) I remember as a 17 year old driving the streets of Darwin in the Northern Territory praying for opportunities to witness to someone. I would sometimes go out with a bunch of mates in a ute or a small truck, and we would have three guys in the cab and one on the back (it wasn’t against the law back then) and we would cruise around looking for hitch hikers.

If we saw someone looking for a ride we would thump on the roof, so everyone knew what was up. We’d pick up the hitcher, and the three guys in the cab would pray and drive, while the one on the back with the hitcher would have the task of witnessing and trying to lead the hitcher to Christ.

I remember one time I was out driving by myself when I saw a guy walking in the opposite direction (not hitching) when I heard an inner voice tell me I should go and talk to the guy. So reluctantly I turned the car around and drove next to the guy, but then lost courage and kept driving. Eventually I had enough courage to stop the car and get out, but I was already several hundred yards past him and parked around the corner. I began walking towards him and when I got there I again lost courage and kept on going. But about 20 yards further on I eventually stopped, turned around and with a deep breath and a loud voice said “hey buddy”. He stopped and half turned to look at me. I hadn’t thought through how I would start a conversation with him at this stage, and I just blurted out “Jesus loves you man”.

“What did you say?” (by this stage I was asking myself the same question) But I found myself repeating “Jesus loves you”

“Why are you telling me that?” he asked. (yep, that was going through my mind as well) “I was driving past, and as I saw you on the side of the road I thought God wanted me to come over and tell you that He loves you.”

“Wow thanks man… You probably won’t believe this” he said “but I’m on my way to the beach to commit suicide. I haven’t felt loved by anyone in a very long time, I just cant live with that any longer”.

Needless to say, the young guy who was walking toward Casuarina beach on a sunny day in Darwin in 1984, did not commit suicide that day.

I can’t tell you that he got radically saved and went on to become a missionary, but I can tell you that I went away rejoicing that God had used me to saved that guys life and sow a seed of love and faith where very few seeds of good had been planted before.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us that amongst other things we aught to ‘pray continuously’, or as some translations put it, ‘pray without ceasing’. And I have to say that in every season in my life when that has been the case, I have seen fruit.

Just walking the streets, praying for the folk who live in those houses or apartments can bring so many opportunities to meet people and share our faith, let alone the fact that many of the people you are praying for may not have anyone else interceding for them in any way.

If we want to help Jesus fulfil His great mission on this earth then we need to get out of our ‘ivory towers’ and out there where its all happening.

I know I need to.

Mission re: Jesus

So if Jesus is building His church and we are to be His church rather than merely doing church, then I am sure we will need 'the mind of Christ' or a 'Jesus mindset' if we are to know and understand His Mission for His church.
A typical 'church mindset' would see Mission as something we do 'over there'.
Growing up in the church, mission for me always revolved around boring talks from little old ladies in dimly lit rooms with more slides than you could poke a stick at coupled with the embarrassing sounds of grunt and snort as nodding heads jerked ever so briefly back into upright.
Not until I read the book 'For this Cross I'll kill you' as a teenager did I begin to appreciate what Mission was all about, and being challenged by the sacrifice of five young missionaries in 1956 who lost their lives amongst the Auca Indians of Ecuador I began dreaming of one day going 'over there' to experience another culture and share Jesus with people I don't know.
After training for ministry and spending a number of years serving the local church I eventually got my first taste of 'over there' when I travelled with a team to the southern Phillipines island of Mindanau. Since then I have also visited a number of African nations and have developed a much broader world view than I ever thought possible. However, as I returned home each time I somehow felt that I should put on a shawl, dim the lights and bake a few scones while presenting the 'over there' slide show for the majority who have stayed at home. What frustrated me the most was that the those who would turn up for the 'over there' slide show would also sit back and watch as a small handful took on the task of reaching out within our local community.
I discovered that having a 'church mindset' could be quite destructive allowing people to escape to the safety of their 'church club' viewing outreach as a task for specialists.
Since then I have noticed that as we begin to see the World as Jesus sees it and gain a 'Jesus mindset' then 'over there' takes on a much broader meaning and we begin to see 'over the back fence' and 'over a coffee' and 'over a desk at work' or school with the same fluency as 'over in Africa' or the Phillipines.
But so long as the church continues to see mission and evangelism as a task for specialists to be done 'over there' we will will continue to fail in our attempts to fulfil the great commission.
From about 16 onwards personal evangelism was quite high on my agenda. In 1983 I attended a week long conference called 'Here's life Tasmania' culminating in a group of newly equipped young saints of God heading out two by two into our local community (much like the Mormons - but without the ties and name tags) to find as many people as possible to engage in spiritual conversation and hopefully lead a few to Christ. The results varied, and I found that I wasn't really cut out for that kind of door to door engagement. The greatest challenge we found was that the local churches in Launceston had done very little over the years to truly engage the community and there wasn't too much respect for church within our city. Who was I to share my faith with complete strangers in my own town.
Fortunately that didn't stop me completely.
I merely learned how to build bridges with people and developed a fervent prayer life, interceding for everyone I felt led to share a witness. Over a period of five or six years I was privileged to lead dozens of people to Christ.
I went off to Bible college and spent four years training to become a pastor during which time I was constantly challenged in my theology and simplistic approach to life and ministry. I Learned a lot.
But at the same time I was gradually gaining a 'church mindset' and after several years in ministry my focus had shifted significantly from trying to change the world to trying to manage the church and deal with my own life issues.
Somewhere in the midst of all that I had lost the momentum of my earlier life.
I became very good at preaching about evangelism and encouraging people to believe in the ideal of reaching a lost world, but I myself was so entrenched in 'doing church' that I was rarely able to connect with those outside the church.
It wasn't until I took on a ministry role within a very small church which couldn't afford a full wage that I began to reconnect with the world. Working in secular employment while ministering in a local church meant I had a foot in both worlds like when I was a lay leader in my youth. But I had lost the passion and momentum of my youth and found that although I was connecting well with many people I was doing very little that might help lead them to Christ.
Mostly it was those who actually turned up at church or signed up for an Alpha Course who I had the courage to engage in real conversations with around faith.
Now I'm leading of a small ministry team where we go around and encourage churches, especially those planting new churches or pastors leading churches in third world nations.
We have learned that each pastor and each church member must first become missionaries in their own land, and must reflect upon their own 'church mindset' to break out and discover new and innovative ways of connecting with their local communities.
Rather than merely 'doing church', working hard to create a good show for a crowd of comfortable saints, we are challenged to engage in meaningful relationships with real people in community, getting back on our knees in prayer while attempting to bring the Kingdom of God into peoples lives through love, acceptance, a listening ear, a shared meal, a word of knowledge in season, a word of encouragement and whatever else the lord might lead us to do or say in the community we find our selves in.
To lead a church that is focussed on fulfilling 'Jesus mission' on earth we must have 'the mind of Christ'!... a 'Jesus mindset'.
We (the church) must begin to see the world through Jesus eyes.
We must view individuals in our community as Jesus views them and learn to respond to the felt needs in that community as Jesus leads us to.
We must have 'Jesus mission' at the centre of all that we do. And we must ask ourselves a few very important questions along the way:
1. What Community or people group are we called to reach? The answer to this question will give us an anchor point for when we are tempted to run away to a new project when things get a bit tough.
2. What felt needs within that community does Jesus want us to attend to? Again, answering this question will help us to remain focussed and not allow potential disappointment to put us off task.
3. How can we place ourselves within that community to build relationship that might lead to respect and trust? It is vital to believe we have a message worth sharing, and that we place ourselves in such a way within peoples lives that they can see Jesus in us, and trust us to the point of hearing the message we carry.
4. What kind of church culture will best honour God and draw us together in community while engaging the lost and growing those already on the journey? The answer to this question will be fashioned in part by the answers to the earlier questions. but is possibly more vital as it will ultimately define what and who we are, as well as fashioning that which we are inviting those in our community to join.

As we endeavour to fulfil Jesus mission on earth and we answer these basic questions I am sure we will see a church emerge that has a different look and feel to any we have been a part of before. I'm excited about the future of His church if we allow Him to lead and grow His church His way.

What if...

A recent conversation with an agnostic friend of mine had me enthralled, defensive, challenged and embarrassed all within the space of a decent coffee break.
Brought up in a catholic system he discovered a plethora of reasons why he should be disillusioned with the church. Like many before him he found church to be irrelevant at best and has spent most of his life philosophising why the world and the church don't seem to get along any more.
With a healthy appetite for investigation he spent a number of years checking out the other brands of god religion only to end up with no religion at all except a wry sense of humour and the ability to debate the various brands with just about anyone on the planet.
As our conversation turned to what I was doing as a part time pastor thinking of planting a missional community in a densely housing commission populated burb within the Sydney landscape, I found he had plenty to say, and I could do very little but listen and learn.

"I hope your not going to build a church like all the others" were his first words of challenge, and I was immediately on the back foot not wanting to have to defend the wider church, yet somehow glad he asked the question, as I too had hoped this church might be a little different.

I grew up in the church, my father an evangelistic preacher/church planter who had moved us as a family all over the nation of Australia from Melbourne to Adelaide, from Darwin to Launceston and Sydney and although it was always very exciting to be apart of growing churches I discovered along the way that the church isn't as fantastic as I was lead to believe.

For one thing it's made up of humans, and we tend to mess things up everywhere we go. It is also carrying the baggage of bygone eras which it has found very difficult to shake off.
For many years the church was heavily influenced by secular organisations and fraternities as many of those who rose to church leadership were schooled in such a way that traditional forms and structures were the norm, and church was run very much like a club for the faithful. Church services were formal occasions where you would stand and sit with the arrival of the president and his parade of helpers and the minister was merely an employee who had to do what he was told.
Thankfully much of this has changed over the past 20 - 30 years, but club culture within the church is still alive and well especially with the emergence of the mega church model while denominational-ism is also a issue amongst the majority smaller congregations scattered throughout the west.
There are however many churches who are doing great things throughout the world, and some of these mega churches are quite clearly leading the way in this. But it is very rare to come across a long established church, large or small, that has managed to throw off the restraints of establishment and really begin to engage the community they are planted in.

Hence I was ok with my friends first challenge. I did however try to explain that we were infact attempting to be a missional community that engages the wider community. This of course fell on deaf ears as he somehow knew that I would likely have some very rigid ideas of what that might look like.
"What if..." he said, "I were to come into your church", he went on to ask me how he might feel if after a little while he didn't like it. Would he be free to leave? Would he feel comfortable walking out?
What if church were not held in a building which looked and felt like a church? What if people were free to come and go as they please, and they weren't pressured into putting money into a plate, sit in rows or wear nice clothes? What if church was in a park under a tree, with a bbq cooking in the background and kids kicking a football around and the music was relevant and not religious, and there were no loud sound systems and the preacher talked about real issues? What if it was more about relationship than religion and God was the centre of that, and rather than giving handouts which people become reliant upon you actually shared meals with people where you engaged in real conversations that build trust and respect?
What if...?
I was attempting to absorb all that he was saying, and was intrigued that he, claiming to be an agnostic, had so succinctly summed up what our real mission on earth was. But he didn't stop there, as if he had read my mind, he said, "so what if people don't come? So what. If they don't come it's because they don't want to be there."
I responded with "yeh, but what if it's really cold or raining in winter who would want to come out to meet in a park. How would you keep them warm"
He said "why do you have to keep them warm? why do they have to come at all? To make you feel better? It's not about you."
OUCH!
To say I had been challenged would be an understatement.
To say I had a lot to chew over would be a fair comment.
To say I have a lot more to learn would also be true.

What if church wasn't about me?
What if rather than trying to build God's church for Him, or trying to get Him to build a church for me, I let Him build His church.
What if I were to get on with the task of 'being church', rather than getting so caught up with 'doing church'.
What if...?