Workshop leader Linda Ruby, a Interim Ministry specialist from Pittsburgh, suggests otherwise. She believes that our congregations have forgotten how to pray and that without prayer congregations stagnate, loose vision and decline. With prayer they prosper.
Prayer connects us to God through Jesus Christ and unleashes the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our world. Through our prayers the new world, the Kingdom of God, proceeds from the Spirit. We are in a battle and we need to learn to "fight war on our knees."
Prayer is the source of evangelism, mission and service. We pray the future into being and then, through prayer, we are given the power to make our portion of that future a reality.
Linda had set the room up as a prayer room, with stations for guided prayer around the room (see slide show at end of post, when I have a chance to upload the pictures.) She also had other suggestions:
- Pastors model different types of prayer through the pastoral prayer
- Pastors preach on prayer (and practice it themselves)
- Prayer vigils
- Prayer walks (walk through the community praying for your neighbors)
- Prayer teams in the church to pray for specific needs
- Praying elders - elders pray for the members
- A group of women in Taiwan who combat addictions by holding 24 hour vigils by the bedsides of addicts. In 90% of cases, after 24 hours of prayer the addiction is gone.
- A group of women in Michigan who camped out in prayer in front of crack houses. They closed them down.
- A pair of friends who walked a dangerous mall each day praying. Crime in the mall visibly decreased and the police publicly thanked the friends.
- Linda's own healing which she credits to a 24-7 vigil by the congregation she was serving at that time.
- A session that spent the first hour and a half of their two hour meetings praying and the accomplished all their business in the last half hour.
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