sustain:if:able kiwi

Season of prayer

A number have people have asked for more info on what is happening with the season of prayer.

I have just moved to a new church, and it seemed to me that there were many links between us as a church facing a new future, and the Acts narrative, with the disciples facing a new future as Jesus ascends. They gathered, waited and prayed. Why could we not gather, wait and pray? Why could we not pause before God, create some space in our lives, to wait and listen?

I wanted us as a community to live in the Biblical story, to let it shape our lives and our dreams. So I divided the Acts chapters 1, 2 into “bits”; and isolated a theme;

Day ::: Biblical Text ::: Theme ::: Focus of prayer
Thu ::: Acts 1:1-5 ::: Fresh excitement ::: Mission
Fri ::: Acts 1:6-11 ::: Repentance ::: Confession
Sat ::: Luke 4:16-21 ::: Mission ::: Ministries, missionaries of church NB This is kid interactive.

Sun ::: Prayer in worship services.

Mon ::: Acts 1:15-26 ::: Leader ::: Leaders and new leaders
Tues ::: Acts 2:1-4 ::: Ministry for all ::: Everyone in church
Wed ::: Genesis 2:2-4 ::: Day of rest
Thu ::: Acts 2:5-12 ::: Many voices ::: Our community
Fri ::: Acts 2:14-37 ::: Preaching ::: Preaching, teaching, people saved
Sat ::: Acts 2:43-47 ::: Healthy community ::: Small groups, community building occasions, radical lifestyle discipleship

To download the file, go here

I made up a booklet; a prayer guide which I gave to everyone in the church. I will put these up tomorrow.

Each day we gather. A different person leads the prayer each night. I have supplied them with a bit of material from Richard Foster’s Prayer, in order to broaden our concepts of prayer.

At the end of the prayer time, we try and summarise in 1 sentence the main thing God is saying — this is a sort of communal discernment process. This is then placed on a phone number (New Zealand) 0508 -ASK GOD (0508 275 463). It enables those not at the corporate gatherings to ring in and remain part of what God is saying.

It’s not flash multi-media and it’s not rocket science and its not cool emergent sexy mission with VJ loops. It’s just a way of us living in the Bible story and in a hectic world, creating space to sit before God.