Tuesday morning evangelistic smack-down, #28

Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire reminder:

Pastor Jim Cymbala swears that Brooklyn Tabernacle went from “doomed” to dynamic after he sensed God speaking to him: “If you and your wife will lead my people to pray and call upon my name, you will never lack for something fresh to preach. I will supply all the money that’s needed, both for the church and for your family, and you will never have a building large enough to contain the crowds I will send in response.”

“Lead to pray.” In Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire Cymbala then quotes that great Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.

Concerning the National Day of Prayer:
What use is a National Day of Prayer if no one has a prayer life, and local churches aren’t passionately interceding?

We need the following:

• Pastors who spend at least an hour a day in personal prayer thus leading by example in this most consequential church dynamic.
  
  
• Churches who reclaim a time for fervent intercession either during the Sunday service or at something like a Wednesday prayer meeting or both.
  
  
• We need pastors to begin beckoning their people to consistent and ardent prayer and fasting as a local church standard.
  
  
• We need seasons of prayer where pastors and laity alike are honing in on the life of holiness God desires for all of us.
  
  
• Then…we need to participate in the bigger vision of “National Days of Prayer.”

I just have this funny feeling that doing the last without the former won’t mean much to God. And that all of these together in abundant fashion across the nation will likely mean revival. MF

Barna.org
A new survey released by The Barna Group, which has been tracking America’s religious behavior and beliefs since 1984, reveals that one out of every three adults (33%) is classified as unchurched - meaning they have not attended a religious service of any type during the past six months. While that figure is considerably higher than the one out of five who qualified as unchurched in the early Nineties, it is statistically unchanged since 36% were recorded as having avoided religious services in the company’s 1994 study.

Podcast
Rick Warren’s discussion with several about how to minister in an urban setting. Always worth listening to. http://blog.pastors.com/

Lausanne
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA/COLORADO SPRINGS, CO USA, 4 May - The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE, www.lausanne.org) today announced plans for the Third International Congress on World Evangelization, to be held 16-25 October, 2010, in Cape Town, South Africa. "Lausanne III: Cape Town 2010" will gather mission and church leaders from around the world to address challenges and opportunities that are before the church with respect to world evangelization.