How to pray for revitalization? Part 2

Our church is in the midst of a prayer emphasis called 40 Strong. This has been a follow-up to a prayer emphasis that led up to Easter called 40 Days of Prayer (pretty original title...don't you think). My desire is that we are known as a church that calls out to God because we know there is no other source that will invigorate our ministry with spiritual power from the Holy Spirit. In fact, this weekend many from our church will experience a Prayer Retreat led by Sandy Skinner (Prayer Coordinator).

I am deeply convicted revitalization can't occur apart from spiritual renewal. Revitalization isn't just about an adjustment to our worship or preaching style. Revitalization isn't just about a "cool" mission or vision. Revitalization isn't just about a church "style." Revitalization is about God doing something sovereign and supernatural. Genuine revitalization must have prayer and spiritual renewal as its foundation. Previously, I wrote about the first three of our seven areas of purposed prayer.


Today will address two more areas within our prayer emphasis.

4. Worship:

There are five specific areas of worship we are praying for...

• God to be glorified - this is the paramount issue in worship. The desire of our hearts should be to corporately proclaim the goodness of God by glorifying Him in worship. We desire to glorify the Father, Son, and Spirit in worship. As part of this area of prayer we pray for Mark Green, our Pastor of Worship, for our musicians (Dr. Tim and Sheila), and our choir. 
• Sermon - I desire for our church to pray for me. My want to preach as one "filled with the Spirit." My goal is to deliver a sermon that helps people understand the text while striving to be relevant and applicable. I seek to accomplish this while moving people closer to the cross and further away from sin. 
• Growth in worship attendance

• We are specifically praying that God brings growth in our Sunday morning worship numbers. I know we are Baptist and Baptists love to count "nickels and noses." Our desire isn't to focus on numbers, but to allow numbers to demonstrate we are being effective at inviting and more importantly that God is answering our prayers be allowing us to see more people in worship every Sunday. 
• Visitors - God bring visitors! 
• We have experienced numerous visitors that have found us through our website. www.afbc.com 
• We have a prominent location on a busy road in the ATL area. So, we pray that something about our location sparks people towards attendance.
• We pray that during the week our member are constantly inviting people to our worship service.
• We pray that God cultivates and works to harvest our community connections.
• Responses to God's call during the worship service
• I am confident that God's Word isn't going to return void, but is going to accomplish ALL that God desires. Therefore, I believe that God is changing hearts, minds, and lives through preaching and the worship experience. Before you ask -- yes, we still have a "invitation." But, our prayer isn't simply about that portion of the worship service. We are praying that God continues to use the worship encounter throughout the week. In other words, someone might make a response on Tuesday morning in the elevator on the way to their office because they have been considering the worship experience from Sunday. 

5. Specific Prospects by name:

We have talked a lot about engaging our neighbors, friends, co-workers, and family members. We have talked a lot about inviting these people to church and ultimately inviting them to follow Jesus. We want to be people that pray specifically because God is the God of specifics. We are attempting to pray for specific prospects. These are the names of friends, neighbors, and the unchurched. We believe that if we pray for these individuals God will move in their hearts and lives. We believe that we will one day have a tremendous testimony of how God brought these specific prospects into the Kingdom of God and into our faith family.

I invite you to pray along with us as God does something that only God can do!

How should we pray for church revitalization? Part 1

How should you pray for church revitalization? This is a question that every church in need of revitalization should thoughtfully consider.

FBCAE is in the midst of a major prayer emphasis. We have been calling this prayer emphasis 40 Strong. This ministry is built around 6 prayer pods and numerous individual people that have committed to pray around 7 areas of purposed prayer. Each prayer pods is comprised of 4 persons. Additionally, we have at least 16 persons who have agreed to pray at-home.

I sense that God desires for us to pray very specifically. God is a God of the specifics. In fact, the Devil isn't in the details -- our sovereign God is in the details! So, as I began to understand the power of prayer as part of the strategy of church revitalization I was led to consider...What does a revitalized church look like? What must happen for us to be considered a revitalized church?

As part of those discussions we established 7 purposed areas of prayer. I would like to explain the first three of the areas of purposed prayer. Next week I will take some time to explain the other four areas of purposed prayer.

1. Revival


We aren't praying that we have the wisdom to calendar a revival. We are praying that God does something special and supernatural. We pray that God's people repent of their sins and experience a fresh movement of the Holy Spirit among His people.

J. I. Packer defined revival as "God's quickening visitation of his people, touching their hearts and deepening his work of grace in their lives."

Stephen Olford defined revival as "the sovereign act of God, in which He restores His own backsliding people to repentance, faith and obedience."

2. Spiritual Growth of our membership...

I have long held to a personal motto of "making and maturing believers." This is language that is borrowed from the Great Commission. Sure the GC is about evangelism and spreading the message of Christ. But, their is a clear directive about teaching those that have been made into disciples and baptized. I sense the church in America is weak because we abandoned the practice of growing and maturing disciples. In the past, we were thrilled to see large crowds and the baptism of hundreds of thousands. But, it seems we never moved most of them past the waters of the baptismal pool. We didn't find them mentors, we didn't establish Bible reading plans they could follow, we didn't personally see to the fact they grew in Christ. And, today there is an absence of "spiritual giants" due to a lack of tending to the spiritual growth fields.

3. Willingness of church members to serve/give/go.

We are praying that members understand their time, talents, and treasures aren't theirs. We pray that ALL members and regular attenders will be generous with their resources -- ALL of their resources. We pray that people will go wherever God calls them. We pray that people will understand their financial resources are really a blessing from God and that we should sacrificially give to the local church and its efforts to accomplish the mission of God. And, we pray that God's people will serve in a variety of areas. The Scriptures record the fact that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. We pray that our members model the ministry of Christ and joyfully serve.

Part 2:

4. Worship
5. Specific prospects and lost individuals by name
6. Specific Ministries
7. Fulfillment of the Great Commission.

The Key to Church Revitalization...

Over a year ago I left the peace, security, and calmness of Federal Prison and accepted the call to serve as Pastor of FBC Avondale Estates. FBCAE isn't unlike so many SBC churches in our day...we are in deep need of revival, renewal, and revitalization.

I have recently spent a great amount of time reading books and blogs about the subject of revitalization. In fact, revitalization is a buzz word these days. We have spent most of the last couple of decades emphasizing church planting. It is encouraging to see that we are balancing ourselves out to encourage church planting AND church revitalization.

Revitalization seems to be a "cooler" version of the term church health. In fact, if our churches were healthy we wouldn't be in need of revitalization.

Where do we begin? How do we get on this ride? What are the first step towards renewal and revitalization?

I sense that we often look too closely at the pragmatics of revitalization...worship style, church government, preaching styles, and the presence of new leadership with a compelling vision.

I am not going to deny that the above mentioned items aren't important. They are vital to a revitalization strategy and shouldn't be neglected. Pragmatic things are important to the revitalization strategy.

But, what is the most important thing...

A strategy that doesn't include prayer and fasting is destined to fail! In fact, a strategy without including prayer and fasting isn't really a biblical strategy.

Spiritual Renewal is good for God's congregation and will help propel us towards congregational revitalization. But, I sense that no church is really ready for revitalization until is ready to seek God in prayer and fasting.

Upon my arrival at FBCAE I really struggled with the overpowering challenge of revitalization. I began to look for a strategy that would work for FBCAE. I wanted a "plug and play" strategy. I wanted some tested strategy that I could use. However, I quickly learned that church revitalization has so much to do with contextualization. There wasn't a surefire method. There wasn't a cookie cutter approach; I was on my own. I am confident there are some important marks of a church desiring renewal and revitalization. And, there are some pragmatic things that are important. But, the beginning of renewal and revitalization is a call to prayer and fasting.