Archive: Church Growth Through Intercessory Prayer

By R.A. Pegram

Churches can and will grow for many reasons. There are seminars, consultants, videos, and shelves full of books available to instruct on church growth. Growth can come about by the personality, natural abilities, and winning ways of a pastor. But sometimes, growth in a congregation can be deceptive.

Several years ago, while serving a district superintendent, I observed good growth in a particular church that had a new pastor. The cabinet brought him in from the South and he had a very winning personality. Every time I met with the leaders of that congregation, they enthusiastically praised this young pastor. Then I received a phone call and found out that he was having an affair with a sixteen-year-old from a former pastorate. Needless to say, the growth did not last.

Church growth (meaning members) can be brought about by publicity, gimmicks, contests, and giving away prizes to the one who brings the most new people. Church growth may be obtained by simply entertaining a crowd—never challenging them to change. Church growth may also be developed by using marketing techniques that have been proven effective in the business world.

In other words, churches that grow are not always growing for the right reasons and in the right way. After all, even many false churches can grow. Cult grow!

As followers of Jesus Christ, it is not the growth that we are concerned about. Growth is a side effect! But as we put Jesus and his kingdom first in our lives, we want to see the church grow because we want others to join our happy throng and become a part of the kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

If the kingdom of Jesus Christ has first place in our lives, we want to obey Jesus’ greatest command: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

This will cause church growth that remains. But the growth is a secondary issue.

How do we make people disciples of Jesus the Christ? If we try to make them our disciples, we all are led astray. Paul did not ask or want people to follow him as Paul. He wanted people to follow him only as he followed Christ.

To be a church that makes disciples, we must be disciplined to live lives like Jesus lived. We cannot do that by using only our mental powers. We can know with our intellect all about Jesus from the Scriptures, but it is impossible for our human abilities to supply the power to live as Jesus lived.

While in the human body, Jesus’ power to discipline his life in obedience to the Father did not come from his human intellect and will. He had a special communion with God the Father. Jesus took time to pray! He prayed for his Father’s glory.

We need to pray that Jesus will be glorified in us, so that our lives will give glory to Jesus and in turn give glory to the Father. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you” (John 17:1).

Jesus prayed for his disciples, “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those you gave me, for they belong to you.” He wanted his glory to shine through them. He prayed for their safety. They were to be kept by the power of God’s name. But he prayed for this. It did not come automatically! He prayed that they would have his joy in all its fullness. Jesus also prayed that they would be kept safe from the evil one, so that they could be truly dedicated to God!

We need to pray also for what Jesus promised in this prayer concerning love. He talked to God the Father about the same love that God has for Christ being in us, and that Jesus himself could then be in us!

Jesus not only prayed, but he also wanted and needed others to pray with him.

In his darkest hour before his arrest, he took Peter, James, and John to be near him as he prayed. After he had prayed—and then found them asleep—he said to Peter, “Could you not keep watch with me for one hour? … Watch and pray” (Matthew 26:40).

Jesus had prayed for an hour. He needed others to pray with him. He commanded them to “keep watch and pray.” Yes, there are times when we need to pray alone-then there are times we need to pray in partnership.

Jesus set the example for us. We need to pray if we expect results from our lives and ministry. The result God wants is for people to be brought from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

The only way to see a church grow on a sure and firm foundation that will endure the storms of time is through intercessory prayer. Only by the growth of individual churches will we see the church grow in the United States and in the world. The time to pray is now!

In Taking Our Cities For God (Creation House), John Dawson says, “It is time to exercise worldwide faith, to pray worldwide prayers, and to expect a worldwide outpouring of God’s Spirit. More than half the people who have ever lived are now alive. The population is climbing to more than five billion. If we don’t have an awakening in this generation, more people will go to an eternity without Christ than in all the past generations put together.”

Outpourings of the Holy Spirit on the church come by way of intercessory prayer. We pray and God sends! At Pentecost, I believe the disciples were praying not only for themselves, but also for the people of Jerusalem who had rejected Jesus. Many of those who had rejected Jesu were relatives, friends, acquaintances, and business associates. The disciples were interceding for Jerusalem with a oneness of purpose. They wanted to see people come to believe in their resurrected Lord. When the Holy Spirit fell on those who were praying, I believe they were so filled with God’s love that their prayers were set on fire for the people they knew.

We can pray people into the kingdom. They did! And today we live in a world where we are in touch around the globe. We are not in touch only with the people in our Jerusalem. Since communication and travel have caused us to be worldwide people, we need to pray worldwide prayers. Then, as John Dawson says, we need to expect a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit of God upon us!

I do not want to stand before God and give an account of myself if I failed to pray to receive an outpouring of God’s Spirit on my city, my country, and my world.

We need to pray until we release control of even our own prayers to God! God will lead us in how great a thing to ask. We need to let God reign over our emotions as we intercede for our church and our world. Nehemiah interceded for Jerusalem when he heard about the difficulty the people had, and that the walls and gates had not been restored. “When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed…, ‘O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God…'” (Nehemiah 1:4-5a). Dawson believes that many Christians “are unable to move with the Spirit into seasons of travail because they have a fear of experiencing deep emotions. The root of this hindrance is the fear of losing control, yet our whole spiritual life depends on our yielding control to the Holy Spirit.”

I have no trouble with the “church growth ” concept when I view it from the perspective that many in our generation are lost today and will be lost eternally if we do not bring them in. This growth, if it is to come by prayer, will not come by quoting a few words or saying a quick prayer that lacks the power of the Holy Spirit. The outpouring of God’s Spirit (real church growth) will come and many will tum when we pray Christ’s own fervent and expectant prayers for the lost!

We must believe people are indeed lost in order to pray effective intercessory prayers. We must be willing to invest our time. “The only thing that will sustain the intercessor through a long season of prayer is continued revelation from the Holy Spirit,” writes Dawson. “The Spirit loves the Father; the Spirit reveals the Father’s compassion; and the Spirit gives us the faith to know that the joy of answered prayer will always come to those who continue in faithfulness. ”

We must lose ourselves in God’s Spirit to truly intercede. I am reminded of a chorus we sang long ago, “Let me lose myself and find it Lord in thee. May all self be slain, my friends see only thee. Though it cost me grief and pain, I will find myself again. If I lose myself and find it Lord in thee.

We need to pray for the lost until we lose ourselves in God’s love for them and identify with their lostness. When we lose ourselves in God, we will allow God’s view of things to dominate our thinking. “The priorities of eternity and the spiritual world should be the realities that dominate our thinking,” Dawson writes. When we die, I’m afraid we will find out that the phantoms we call reality today will be seen for what they are. The very things we think of as reality today will show up as the unreal. The things we talk of as other-worldly will be the real world of eternity. Let’s live and pray for the things that will mean the most to us a thousand years from now. Those people who do not know Jesus the Christ in this life, will be somewhere one thousand years from now. Our prayers can make a difference! What a privilege God has given us in the power of intercession.

Finding time to pray

We live in a busy world. Most all of us lead very busy lives. How do we find time to pray? I’ve noticed that people find time for what is really important in their lives.

Susannah Wesley, mother of John and Charles Wesley—the founders of Methodism—had nineteen children. She didn’t have all the conveniences that we have today. She was also a pastor’s wife. But every week, she spent one hour of spiritual training with each child. John remembered the hour his mother set aside for him for the rest of his life, and he prayed during that hour. Every day she set aside one hour and went into her bedroom from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., closed the door, knelt beside her bed, and prayed and read the Bible! “How would you like to try to explain to Susannah Wesley why you can’t find time to pray?” asks Larry Lea in his book Could You Not Tarry One Hour? (Creation House).

Prayer was very important in her life, and her intercession changed the world!

We can and must change the world with our intercession for the unchurched. I have a special burden for the lost and feel this is the basic way we should grow as a church.

C. Peter Wagner believes, “Satan is not unduly threatened by the kind of prayer that stays within the Christian community. As long as we are not expelling him from the lives of people, he will let us be as religious as we wish. But if we begin to take seriously our call to Christian service and especially our commission to world evangelization—I speak advisedly—all hell may break loose.”

Let’s cause all hell to break loose! The power we have within us known as the Holy Spirit is so much greater than the powers of hell, that we have nothing to fear! Let’s do it! Do what? Let’s declare war on the spirits of darkness through prayers of intercession. We can and will bring people from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light!

We are in a war! Let’s take the offensive. By prayer we can go after the forces of Satan. Peter Wagner speaks of taking the world view espoused by Jesus Christ so we will cooperate most naturally with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ world view sees the cosmic drama as a clash of loyalties between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. We are to invade the kingdom of darkness first of all by intercessory prayer in order to release the captives and bring them into the kingdom of our God!

Prayer is our most important weapon. In The Last of the Giants, George Otis Jr. writes concerning the role of prayer: “With effects as boundless as the God whom it stimulates, prayer is easily the single most important weapon in the believers’ arsenal today. It is writer Walter Winks’ spiritual defiance of what is, in the name of what God has promised. Intercession visualizes an alternative future to the one apparently fated by the momentum of current contradictory forces. It breathes the air of a time yet to be into the suffocating atmosphere of present reality!”

Otis points out that the intercessory prayer mentioned more than thirty times in the book of Acts preceded virtually all major breakthroughs in the outward expansion of the early Christian movement.

By being willing to be intercessors and by recruiting many others, we can—and I believe we will—have major breakthroughs and outward expansion today in the part of God’s kingdom called United Methodism!

R.A. Pegram recently retired after serving 45 years as a United Methodist pastor. He is the former senior pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Neenah, Wisconsin, a congregation he pastored for 19 years. The Rev. Pegram now lives in Intercession City, Florida.