The Priority of Prayer
As a church planter, your to-do-list feels endless: recruit and train a launch team, fundraise, organize marketing and outreach activities, locate a gathering space, structure ministry teams, network with community leaders, develop leaders, plus a few hundred thousand other tasks. Actually, our church planting checklist only consists of 436 tasks, so maybe it isn’t endless, but it can feel that way when you begin chipping away at it.
One resource we created to help planters manage their schedules and accomplish essential church planting tasks is a project management tool called PlanterPlan. This software sequentially maps out all the tasks you need to complete in order to turn your church planting vision into reality.
Of all the tasks listed in PlanterPlan, none is more essential to the health of the church than establishing an intercessory prayer team. Unfortunately, some church planters get distracted with the immediate, and lose sight of the ultimate while planting. They focus on the visible but neglect the invisible. They work hard, but forget to pray harder, and lead others to join them in this spiritual battle.
If you’re a church planter who’s feeling overwhelmed by the number of things you need to get done this week, stop for a moment and pray. Spend time with God. Thank him. Praise him. Profess your dependance on him. Ask him to show up in a miraculous way and move mountains in your ministry. Remember, you can do more than pray once you have prayed, but you can’t do more than pray until you have prayed. We believe that wholeheartedly. That’s why we’ve packed this month’s newsletter full of ideas and resources to help you intensify the prayer support being offered for your church. Enjoy!
-Patrick Bradley, Director of Operations
December 2021 – Contents
- Prayer Team Strategy Template
- Around the Clock Prayer
- Exponential 2022
- Eat Less, Pray More
Prayer Team Strategy Template
No team you develop will be more important than your intercessory prayer team. There will be no partner more important, no project more significant than the army of prayer warriors you recruit to intercede for your church plant. Getting your prayer team up and running early in the life of the plant must be a major priority. No matter how gifted you are as a leader, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you neglect to cover yourself and the church plant in prayer.
Are you ready to start a prayer team for your church plant? If you are, you may be wondering where to begin. A great place to start is our Prayer Team Strategy Template. This template will walk you through several key questions to help you develop a clear vision for a prayer team and give you next steps for developing and empowering one. Download your free template today!
Around the Clock Prayer
Several years ago, God gave Pete Greig a vision to create a space dedicated to seeking Him in prayer. It would be a place where people could pray around the clock. What started as one prayer room in a warehouse on the south coast of England has gone global. This prayer movement called 24-7 Prayer has now touched over 2 million people through 10,000 unique prayer rooms found all over the world from the slums of Delhi, to a punk rock festival in Germany, to a brewery in Missouri.
Now this movement wants to help make prayer a priority within your church. For ideas and resources to bolster the prayer life of your church visit: Help My Church Pray.
Exponential 2022
Immediately before launching His church, Jesus commanded his disciples to stay and wait. “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised,” Jesus told his followers before ascending to heaven. Before they were to go and make disciples of all nations, they needed to wait for and then move in step with the Spirit of God.
At this year’s Exponential conference, we’ll grow together in our awareness of the Spirit’s work and leadership while also realizing that we will always need his empowering to be effective in ministry. Join thousands of leaders for inspiration, encouragement, and equipping at Exponential 2022 in Orlando, FL. This year’s the conference will feature over 200 speakers, 150 workshops, 20 pre-conference intensives, and over 75 networks and denominations.
We’ll be there leading a pre-conference equipping lab and conference workshops during the week. Both will be focused on planting healthy, multiplying churches. We hope to see you there!
Eat Less, Pray More
When was the last time you fasted? Was it for a spiritual reason or because you were getting blood work done? Fasting is not typically something most Christians love to do, yet both the old and new testaments attest to the value of fasting. Today many people fast for purely physical reasons (intermittent fasting is one example), but fasting for believers is about so much more than just purifying the body of toxins. It’s about enhancing our connection and dependance on our Heavenly Father.
At Passion for Planting, we’re novices when it comes to fasting. We have a lot to learn when it comes to abstaining from food to focus on God. Fortunately, our friends at the Renew Network published a short book on fasting to help all of us understand biblical reasons to fast and how to go about making it a part of your weekly routine. Purchase your copy of Prayer and Fasting: Moving with the Spirit to Renew our Minds, Bodies, and Churches today.