Every Church a House of Prayer?

A very important consideration when preparing to plant is the issue of primary purpose. It’s quite normal to identify evangelism or small groups or any number of other ministries as the primary purpose of a specific church.

As I write about in 20 Elements of Revival, we must embrace the ‘ancient and emerging’ paradigm of the 24/7 church. This paradigm is reformation driven and in its maturity will see the church once again function first as a house of prayer.

The old mindset would cause one to say, “Evangelism is our main focus, and we acknowledge that we must pray in order for us to be successful.”
The ancient and emerging mindset will result in saying things like, “Prayer is job one. This is what we do night and day as a church. Every person in the church pours themself into extensive intercession many days and nights of the week. As a result, the lost are craving God. When we meet people in the shopping center or on the job the fire of God is coming out of our mouths. Lives are being changed and the Kingdom is advancing.”

To start a church without the understanding that the call to prayer will be the dominant call for every participant is to start a church on an unhealthy foundation.

To know God is to crave God. We must stimulate an atmosphere of extreme joy, life, passion and fire. The stimulus for this is constant prayer.

In Acts two we see the church started with prayer and it continued in prayer– daily.

If the church is to change the culture in this nation, we must refuse to give in to the cares of life. Church schedules don’t conform to work, school, baseball practice or ballet lessons. Those schedules must conform to the advance of the church. I remember when schools would’t give homework on Wednesday nights and youth sports programs didn’t have anything going on on Wednesday nights. What has happened? Instead of surrendering to the cares of life it’s time we are concerned about the cares of the Kingdom.

Our churches must lead the way.