by Steve | Mar 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: Evangelism for a New Era
By Nicky Gumbel
March/April 2001
Good News
I have never been a natural evangelist. I have never found it easy to talk to my friends about Jesus Christ. Some people are completely natural evangelists; they find it the easiest thing in the world. … I’ve been looking for ways in which ordinary people like me, who aren’t naturally gifted evangelists, can communicate their faith with friends, family, and colleagues without feeling fearful or risking insensitivity. …
The Alpha course began in our church, Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church in London, in order to present the basic principles of faith to new Christians. It is a 10-week informal course offered to explore the basic meanings of the Christian faith. What we discovered was chat most of the people taking the course were not committed Christians, but people who were merely curious about the faith.
When Alpha first started growing I thought, “How could something that started in Central London work elsewhere?” Alpha currently runs in more than 100 countries: in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and many others.
While at an Alpha conference in Zimbabwe, I discovered that Alpha was not only running among the English-speaking white Zimbabweans but also among the Shona-speaking people in their own language. Zimbabwe has a population of just over 10 million people: there are 80,000 whites in Zimbabwe but 90 percent of the black population speak Shona. While I was at the conference l met Edward Ngamuda who had originally done Alpha in English but then thought that he would like to run the course in Shona. A couple who had come to Christ on Alpha asked him to come and run the course with the 900 people who worked on their farm. Thirty people came on the first course and 50 came on the second.
I asked him whether these people were Christians when they came on the course. “No,” he replied, “we had a Muslim, a witch doctor, and a polygamist come.” I asked how the polygamist happened to be there and was told that his first wife came on the first course, and that she had brought him and the other two wives on the next one! Edward assured me that Alpha worked better in Shona than it did in English. It was then that I began to realize that this course, which started in London, could operate in different countries and cultures. Why is this?
Evangelism is a process. Conversion may take place in a moment but it is part of a process. Jesus used the expression “born again” (John 3:3) for the beginning of a spiritual life, and the New Testament speaks about becoming a child of God. While the birth of a child may be one event, there is a much longer process before and afterwards. The Bible uses many other images to represent spiritual growth: some are taken from agriculture, others from the ideas of building or journeying. All these involve a process.
Alpha is a 10-week course involving a total of 15 talks which include a weekend and a celebration party at the end. We do not expect people to respond to the gospel after the first week (although some do). We recognize that people need time to think, watch, listen, and to talk through their questions and difficulties. Each person is beginning at a different stage.
Some are already Christians but will often say in retrospect that at the start of the course they were Christians “without any real experience of God.” Others are at the point of new birth when they begin Alpha. Some have already given their lives to Christ at the party at the end of the previous course, others at a special event before the beginning of Alpha. Still others come to faith through the witness of their family or a friend. Many are still a long way off when they begin Alpha.
Some are convinced atheists, some are New Agers, some are adherents to other religions or cults. Many are living in lifestyles which are far from Christian. … We welcome them all. Some will complete the whole course and still not be Christians at the end; … others will give their lives to Christ somewhere on the course. For nearly all of them, Alpha will enable them to take a step forward in their relationship with God.
The fact that there is a process spread over 15 sessions enables us to give longer to aspects of the Christian faith than one would be able to in one evangelistic talk. For example, in 1994 I saw a man standing at the back of the room who looked very suspicious and worried. When I introduced myself he said, “I don’t want to be here, I’ve been dragged along.” I said, “Great! Let me introduce you to 11 other people who don’t want to be here,” and I took him to meet my small group. At the end of the evening I heard him chatting to someone else in the group.
“Are you coming back next week?”
The other man replied, “Yes, I’ll be here.”
To which the first man said, “Well, if you’re coming back next week, I’ll come back next week.”
Six weeks later he said to me, “This course is like a jigsaw puzzle. Every time I come back another piece fits into place. And I’m beginning to get the picture.”
Furthermore, the fact that Alpha is a process enables trust to develop. There is a great deal of cynicism, skepticism, and distrust about the Christian church. I had no idea of the extent of this until I spoke to someone who said that for the first three weeks of the course he had not eaten the food in case it was drugged. That was an extreme case of distrust, but many people wonder if the church is after their money, their mind, or something else.
The whole person. Evangelism involves an appeal to the whole person: mind, heart, conscience, and will. Each talk is designed to appeal to all four, although in some of the talks the emphasis will be on just one.
We appeal to the mind because we believe that Christianity is based in history: on the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We preach “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (I Cor. 2:2). We seek to persuade with every argument we can muster, just as Paul did on so many occasions (e.g. Acts 18:4). We try to teach only what we can establish from the Bible and we point people to the biblical text. We do not expect anyone to take a “blind leap” of faith. Rather, we hope they will take a step of faith based on reasonable grounds.
Secondly, we appeal to the heart. Our message does not simply require an assent of the intellect to a series of propositions, but rather it calls people to a love-relationship with Jesus Christ. John Stott has written: “There is a place for emotion in spiritual experience. The Holy Spirit’s … ministry is not limited to illuminating our minds and teaching us about Christ. He also pours God’s love into our hearts. Similarly, he bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children, for he causes us to say ‘Abba, father’ and to exclaim with gratitude, ‘How great is the love the father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!’ … I think it was Bishop Handley Maule at the end of the last century who gave this good advice: ‘Beware equally of an undevotional theology (i.e. mind without heart) and of an untheological devotion (i.e. heart without mind).’”
Graham Cray, principal of Ridley Hall Theological College in Cambridge, England, has spoken with great insight about the culture of the 1990s, which is in the process of shifting from an Enlightenment culture to a new and coming one. In the Enlightenment, reason reigned supreme and explanation led to experience. In the present transitional culture with its “pick-and-mix” worldview, in which the New Age movement is a potent strand, experiences lead to explanation.
I have found on Alpha that those from an essentially Enlightenment background feel at home with the parts of the course which appeal to the mind, but often have difficulty in experiencing the Holy Spirit. Others coming from the New Age movement find that rational and historical explanations leave them cold, but at the weekend away they are on more familiar territory in experiencing the Spirit. Previously they will have been seeking experiences which have then left them discontented and only in experiencing a relationship with God through Jesus Christ do they find their hunger is satisfied.
The gospel involves both the rational and the experiential and it has an impact upon both those from an Enlightenment background who need to experience God and those who have sought experiences but who need to understand the truth about God.
Third, we seek to appeal to the conscience. Paul writes, “By setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2). We know that every person has a conscience. Deep down we all have a sense of right and wrong. The Holy Spirit, often working through people’s conscience, convinces them about sin. Their consciences therefore are on our side. Throughout the course we are appealing to this side in urging people to repent and turn to Christ.
Fourth, we seek to appeal to the will. We recognize, of course, that no one can come to God unless he calls them. As Jesus said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). On the other hand, Jesus went on to say in the very next verse, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). In other words, he called for a decision.
There is a difference between an appeal to the will and the wrong form of pressure. We try to avoid all forms of pressure on Alpha. We do not endlessly exhort anyone to respond, or chase people down if they do not come back: it is up to them to decide. Over the period of 10 weeks, as we pray and allow the Holy Spirit to do his work, giving people the opportunity to respond, we are, in effect, making a continuous appeal to their wills.
Dynamic and effective. On the day of Pentecost such was the power with which Peter preached that the people were “cut to the heart” and 3,000 were converted (Acts 2:37-41). The remarkable events continued: “Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles …. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:43-47).
Remarkable healings followed (Acts 3:1-10). People were astonished and came running to find out what had happened (3:11). Peter and John preached the gospel with great boldness: “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing there with them, there was nothing they could say” (Acts 4:13-14). The authorities had no idea what to do because “all the people were praising God for what had happened. For the man who was miraculously healed was over forty years old” (Acts 4:21-22).
Far from dwindling away through the period covered by the book of Acts, this spiritual dynamic continued. Even in the last chapter we read of Paul praying for Publius’ father: “His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him. When this had happened, the rest of the sick on the island came and were cured” (Acts 28:8-9). All the way through we see the dynamic effect of the coming of the kingdom of God accompanied by conversions, miraculous signs, healings, visions, tongues, prophecy, raising the dead, and casting out evil spirits. The same God is at work today among us. Evangelism can still be dynamic and effective.
The fullness of the Spirit. Jesus told his disciples, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). On the Day of Pentecost the promise of Jesus was fulfilled and “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4).
However, it did not end there. Later we read of Peter being “filled with the Spirit” again (Acts 4:8). Still later the disciples (including Peter) were filled again (Acts 4:31). The filling of the Holy Spirit is not a onetime experience. Paul urges the Christians of Ephesus “to be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18) and the emphasis is on continuing to be filled.
I think that there can be little doubt that the greatest evangelist of our century has been Billy Graham (b. 1918). In his authorized biography, John Pollock tells how Billy Graham visited Hildenborough Hall and heard Stephen Olford speak on the subject “Be not drunk, but be filled with the Spirit.” Billy Graham asked to see Olford privately and Olford expounded the fullness of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. “At the close of the second day they prayed, ‘like Jacob of old laying hold of God,’” recalls Olford, “crying, ‘Lord, I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me,’ until we came to a place of rest and praising,” and Graham said, “This is a turning point in my life. This will revolutionize my ministry.”
… Those who come to Christ on the course know that a radical change has occurred in their lives because they have been filled with the Holy Spirit. This experience of God gives them the stimulus and power to spread the good news of Jesus Christ and see, firsthand, the expansion of the kingdom of God.
Nicky Gumbel studied law at Cambridge and theology at Oxford, practiced as a lawyer, and is now ordained and on the staff of Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. He is the author of the curriculum of the Alpha Course. He is also the author of Why Jesus?, Questions of Life, Why Christmas? Searching Issues and numerous other books. This article is excerpted from his book, Telling Others. © 1994 Cook Communications Ministries, Telling Others by Nicky Gumbel. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
by Steve | Jan 26, 2001 | Archive - 2001
Archive: How Shall We Pray for Revival
By Nicky Gumbel
January/February 2001
Good News
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem, They will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth” (Isaiah 62:6-7).
In the autumn of 1857, New York was in the midst of what was regarded as a national disaster – a financial crash which ruined many of its 1 million population. On July 1, Jeremiah Lanphier, a middle-aged businessman, took an appointment as a missionary in the city center. Churches were suffering from depletion of membership as people moved out of town. Lanphier decided to start a lunchtime prayer meeting. On the first week, he prayed alone for half an hour until five others joined him. The following week twenty came. Within six months, 10,000 people came daily to pray and a revival in North America had begun. Samuel Prime comments, “the places of prayer multiplied because men were moved to prayer. They wished to pray. They felt impelled, by some unseen power, to pray.”
If we, too, want to see revival, how are we to pray?
First, we are to pray constantly. The watchman “will never be silent day or night” (v. 6a). We are to be different from Israel’s watchmen of the past who “lie around and dream, they love to sleep” (Isaiah 56: 10). lnstead, we are to “pray continually,” as the New Testament encourages us (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome and told them, “Constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times” (Romans 1:9-10).
The source of the river of prayer which flows in the South Korean church today originated in the dedicated prayer among missionaries and South Korean church leaders at the turn of the century. The Pyongyang revival of 1907, for example, began at a mass meeting in which thousands were caught up in a wave of the Spirit which swept over the entire Korean church. An eye witness account described it like this:
“After a short sermon Dr. [Graham] Lee took charge of the meeting and called for prayers. So many began praying that Dr. Lee said, ‘if you want to pray like that, all pray,’ and the whole audience began to pray out loud, all together. The effect was indescribable. Not confusion, but a vast harmony of sound and spirit, a mingling together of souls moved by an irresistible impulse to prayer. It sounded to me like the falling of many waters, an ocean of prayer beating against God’s throne …. As the prayer continued, a spirit of heaviness and sorrow came upon the audience. Over on one side, someone began to weep and, in a moment, the whole congregation was weeping …. Man after man would rise, confess his sin, break down and weep, and then throw himself to the floor and beat the floor with his fists in a perfect agony of conviction …. Sometimes after a confession, the whole audience would break out in audible prayer and the effect … was something indescribable …. And so the meeting went on until 2 a.m., with confession and weeping and praying.”
Another example of constant, steadfast prayer is Dr. Jashil Choi, mother-in-law of David Yonggi Cho, pastor of the world’s largest church located in South Korea. Dr. Choi gave herself to praying for long periods on a mountain, living in fact, for three years in a tent on the site. In 1974 a permanent building was erected and prayer meetings which attract large numbers of people have been held every day since. Prayer Mountain has grown to be a place where thousands of people come daily to fast and pray. A modern 10,000-seat auditorium has been added which is now too small to hold the crowds that come. Attendance varies, but normally at least 3,000 people are daily praying, fasting, worshipping, and praising our holy and precious Lord. In this atmosphere of concentrated prayer, healings and miracles are a common occurrence.
David Yonggi Cho writes, “I am convinced that revival is possible anywhere people dedicate themselves to prayer … it has been historically true that prayer has been the key to every revival in the history of Christianity.”
Secondly, our prayer should be disciplined. Those who call on the Lord are exhorted to “give ourselves no rest” (Isaiah 62:6), to pray regularly, day in and day out. This is not always easy.
John Arnott, the senior pastor of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, which has been at the center of a remarkable move of God’s Sprit, wrote of his struggle to maintain a disciplined prayer life:
“In my own case, the struggle has been desperate and intense. There have been seasons of wonderful times ‘in the closet with my heavenly Father, praying to him in secret and being rewarded by him openly.’ During such times, one feels that everything is working out for the good, and one wonders why we could ever be so foolish as to not spend generous hours in communion with God. Then suddenly the cares of this life descend with such fury that the now-found prayer route is derailed once more, and the battle to regain it continues.”
Thirdly, we are to pray with urgency. Not only are we to give ourselves no rest but we are to “give him no rest” (v. 7). We are called to be passionate and pressing. Jesus told his disciples a parable “to show them that they should always pray and not give up” (Luke 18: 1). Although the judge in the parable “neither feared God nor cared about men” (v. 2), he gave a persistent widow justice because she kept on asking until he was concerned that she would wear him out – “I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!” (v. 5). Jesus comments, “And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off! I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly” (v. 7-8).
The persistent widow is a good model for us as we pray for revival because she challenges us to be honest about our present state and to ask God passionately for change. “Only when we realize and admit our true condition will we long for revival,” writes Brian H. Edwards in his book Revival! A People Saturated with God. “Praying for revival is not enough: we must long for it, and long for it intensely.”
The historian of revivals, R.E. Davies, wrote: “The most constant of all factors which appears in revivals is that of urgent, persistent prayer. This fact is acknowledged by all writers on the subject.”
Fourthly, our prayer should be persevering. The watchmen are to pray “till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of all the earth” (v. 7). They are to pray until the whole earth gives praise to the Lord.
Duncan Campbell writes of the 1949 Hebrides revival: “I believe this gracious movement of the Holy Spirit … began in a prayer burden; indeed there is no doubt about that. It began in a small group that was really burdened. They entered into a covenant with God that they would ‘give him no rest until he made Jerusalem a praise in the earth.’”
They waited. The months passed, and nothing happened, until one young man took up his Bible and read from Psalm 24: “Who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart …. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord.” The young man closed the Bible and, looking at his companions on their knees before God, he cried, “Brethren, it is just so much humbug to be waiting thus night, month after month, if we ourselves are not right with God. I must ask myself – ‘Is my heart pure? Are my hands clean?”‘ He asked God to reveal if his hands were clean and his heart was pure. As they waited on God his awesome presence swept the barn. These men came to understand that revival is always related to holiness. Three men were lying on the straw having fallen under the power of God. They were lifted out of the ordinary into the extraordinary. They knew that God had visited them and a power was let loose that shook the parish from its center to its circumference. In a house four miles away from the barn, two sisters – one was 82-years-old and doubled-up with arthritis and the other was 84-years-old and blind – had a vision of God. They saw the churches crowded, especially with young people. They had a “glorious assurance that God was coming in revival power.”
Their minister sent for Duncan Campbell to come for a 10-day mission, but he was booked up until the following winter. The minister read Campbell’s reply to the two old ladies. They said, “That is what man hath said, but God hath said otherwise. Mr. Campbell will be here in a fortnight.”
His convention was cancelled and he arrived on the island and went to the parish church. The meeting began at 9 p.m. and continued until 4 a.m. There was a crowd of more than 600 inside, with still more listening outside. No one could explain where they had come from. Strong men trembled in the presence of God, and many fell prostrate on the floor. Within 10 minutes Campbell’s voice could not be heard, as so many were crying out to God for mercy. The sound of singing had been replaced with a cry of penitence – “God be merciful to me, a sinner.” As people experienced the holiness of God, they committed themselves to seeking after him. The movement swept into the neighboring parish. There was such a sense of God there that one businessman visiting the island said, “When I stepped ashore I was suddenly conscious of God. He met with me and saved me.”
The challenge facing the church today is to pray for God to “rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64: 1), to give us “a consciousness of the presence of God, the Holy Spirit literally in the midst of the people.” We need a new righteousness, a new freedom, a new identity and new love. It is easy to give up interceding and to grow despondent when we do not see instant results, but we need to pray constantly, calling on the Lord in a disciplined and urgent way “till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” Individual and corporate prayer are a vital part of preparation for revival which in turn leads to greater individual and corporate prayer. As Billy Graham once said, the three keys to revival are prayer, prayer, and prayer.
Nicky Gumbel studied law at Cambridge and theology at Oxford, practiced as a lawyer, and is now ordained and on the staff of Holy Trinity Brompton Church in London. He is the author of the Alpha Course. He is also the author of Why Jesus?, Questions of Life, Why Christmas?, Searching Issues, and numerous other books. This article is excerpted from his book, The Heart of Revival. © 1996 Cook Communications Ministries, Heart of Revival by Nicky Gumbel. Reprinted with permission.
by Steve | Sep 23, 2000 | Archive - 2000
Archive: Praise the Lord and Pass the Lasagna
By Steve Beard
September/October 2000
Good News
In what must be one of the most audacious and ambitious plans ever hatched by a local congregation, the parishioners of Holy Trinity Brompton Anglican Church in London have invited the entire nation of England to a dinner party. With all of the bells and whistles of an engaging nation-wide media campaign, this lively congregation may have come up with a way to revive a spiritually-barren nation.
Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) is well-known around the world for developing Alpha, a ten-week course that emphasizes sharing a meal, small group fellowship, thoughtful presentations on the key issues of life, and experiencing God through the power of the Holy Spirit. The course probes questions such as Who is Jesus?, Why did Jesus die?, How can I be sure of my faith? and Why should I read the Bible?
The Revs. Sandy Millar and Nicky Gumbel from HTB have been circumnavigating the globe in the last several years teaching people how to run the winsome and popular course. It is now found in more than 110 different nations – breaking every language, socioeconomic, and cultural barrier.
Londoners have been flocking to the church for years to take the course and make thoughtful decisions about the Christian faith in an atmosphere developed for seekers. Polls show that 3.6 million people in the United Kingdom have now been on an Alpha course or know someone who has. It is as popular among the well-educated and wealthy as it is among the prison population. Alpha is found behind bars in more than 120 of the 158 prisons in the country.
The vision behind the dinner party initiative is to join forces with churches all over the country and invite everyone to an Alpha dinner party, and subsequently to an Alpha course starting soon at a church near them. At each of the dinner parties during the last week of September, Nicky Gumbel’s 30-minute talk, “Christianity: Boring, Untrue and Irrelevant?,’’ will be delivered – either live or on video. In nine major regions of the country, including Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, Gumbel will deliver the talk in person at large venues following the dinner parties.
“The campaign comes amid a rate of decline in church attendance figures which has alarmed Christian leaders,” reports The Times. “Last year attendance figures fell to 7.5 percent of the population. If the trend continues, by 2016 only one person in 100 will be a regular churchgoer.” The Times rightfully described the Church as “bleeding to death.”
“It is paradoxical that while church numbers are falling there is an incredible spiritual hunger out there,” responds Gumbel, the Oxford trained attorney and clergyman. “People realize that materialism doesn’t give them a point to life and want the Church to provide something more.”
The Alpha program is the most explosive spiritual export from Great Britain since John Wesley sent Francis Asbury to stir the fires of revival in the colonies. Many of the most vibrant and growing United Methodist churches – from Philadelphia to Chicago to Kansas City – are utilizing the Alpha course to reach those outside the church.
- Alpha utilizes a meal and small groups to create an informal atmosphere to engage the eternal issues that really matter. “Alpha is the most effective and poignant means of evangelism using small groups that I know,” says Dr. Rob Frost, national evangelist for the Methodist Church in Great Britain. “It is John Wesley’s class meeting rediscovered.”
- Alpha engages both the heart and the mind. My postmodern generation will not be reached solely by intellectual evidence, but neither will it suffer fools gladly. In the small groups, questions are encouraged. The talks are filled with apologetics yet Alpha leaders realize that if the Holy Spirit does not show up, people will be smarter but not changed.
- Alpha recognizes that each individual must make his or her decision about Jesus at their own timing. Therefore, no one is pressured. The wooing and rhythm of the Holy Spirit is honored. “I believe that Alpha may well be God’s instrument for salvation for many in this generation, just as Billy Graham was for so many in the previous one,” observes Dr. I. Howard Marshall, professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Aberdeen.
From the beginning, the heart cry of Methodism has been the desire to join evangelical theology with evangelistic practice. God has clearly anointed Alpha to help reignite the passion for evangelism in the local church. How many years will it take before we are confident enough in the power of the Holy Spirit to invite our nation to dinner?
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Jan 26, 2000 | Archive - 2000
Archive: The Power of Prayer
By Sundo Kim (1930-2022)
Good News
January/February 2000
While some may respond with skepticism and hesitation about church growth in the new millennium, I believe the potential for growth is tremendous. God will continue to bless churches as they grow and fulfill the Great Commission. But churches must reclaim their mission in the world through prayer.
In the years to come we will witness growing interest in spirituality. Some futurists inform us that the new millennium will be an “age of information” or “age of globalization.” I also believe it will be an age when people will become more open to the supernatural world, which is beyond rational and empirical comprehension. Postmoderns are dissatisfied with rational and scientific explanations of the world, and they are turning to religious paradigms for new ways of understanding themselves and the world. People are no longer dismissing religions with contempt, but are carefully considering them, hoping to find meaning and purpose in their lives. It is a favorable time for churches to seize this opportunity and reach out to the unchurched with the good news of Jesus Christ. Therefore, from a sociological perspective, we can say that the possibility for church growth is immense.
But more importantly, we are hopeful about the future of the church because of our strong theological conviction about its mission. God has chosen and established the church as an instrument of salvation for the world until the end of the age. Therefore, we ought to approach the new millennium with a sense of purpose and confidence. God is with us!
But many pastors and churches have lost their mission and place in the world. How can churches reclaim a sense of purpose and confidence? Through prayer! Prayer is a means for churches to clearly understand their mission and to gain confidence. Through prayer we must continue to nurture the fundamental ecclesiological conviction that we have a mission in the world. A passionate and sustained prayer life can lead us into the presence of God who strengthens us in our mission for the world. Thus, we cannot do anything without prayer. Here are some explanations on the integral relationship between prayer and church growth:
1. One of the greatest benefits of prayer is to develop a personal relationship with God. Just as we develop social relationships through communication, we develop a personal relationship with God through prayer. When God spoke to Jeremiah and called him into ministry, God used personal language: “I and thou” (Jer. 1:4-10). God communicated with Jeremiah person to person; our God is a personal God. Without a personal relationship with him, we cannot discern his will for our church. People of prayer build the church. Therefore, pastors and churches muse pray to grow in their personal relationships with God.
2. We pray to receive spiritual power. Churches do not grow through human planning and engineering. Many articles and books have been published to address various factors which lead to church growth, but I believe the most important factor is spiritual power. David confessed that the source of his triumph was God (2 Sam. 22:2-4). In his victory over Goliath, David acknowledged that God had given him the necessary power (1 Sam. 17:45-47). The secret to attaining spiritual power is to kneel before God in prayer with humility. When God enables us with spiritual power, we can lead churches with dynamic power, and experience church growth.
3. We pray to accept spiritual leadership. Words such as leadership, vision, and paradigm have been circulated widely in recent years. Spiritual leaders need to receive new visions from God to change their paradigms and to effectively lead people into the future. God will grant new visions to leaders committed to prayer, just as he had given many visions to Old and New Testament leaders. It is through prayer that we receive new visions, and we implement them with God’s guidance. Without a prayer life, one cannot become a spiritual leader; and without a spiritual leader, a church cannot grow.
4. We pray to regain spiritual vitality. The Holy Spirit grants dynamic spiritual vitality to us when we pray. Many pastors have reported their experiences of burnout, and many have sought to deal with this issue. But I believe the most effective way to overcome burnout is by experiencing God’s presence through prayer. God will grant new strength to those who seek him and “they will soar on wings like eagles” (Isa. 40:29-31 ). Pastors without spiritual vitality will burn out. After 40 years of ministry I can testify that there is an organic connection between church growth and a pastor’s spiritual vitality.
5. We pray to experience signs and wonders. A common phenomenon in recent years is the emergence of new cults and folk religions that are gaining a wider audience. It is my speculation that in the new millennium we will witness diverse expressions of spirituality, and many people will seek spiritual signs and wonders. Churches of the 21st century must be able to accurately observe and interpret these sociological developments and be prepared to provide clear answers and direction. For instance, churches must be able to provide healing as demonstrated in the Bible, especially as experienced by early Christians (Acts 3: 1-10). Recently, the World Health Organization accepted a holistic understanding of health that includes not only physical and emotional dimensions, but spiritual dimension as well. Contemporary churches have every right and responsibility to be instruments of God’s healing in the manner and likeness of the early church.
The Kwang Lim Methodist Church that I pastor regularly practices spiritual healing during early morning prayer, special services, and during Sunday worship, through which we have experienced many miraculous healings. These healing experiences have demonstrated the presence of the Holy Spirit, and have given us a strong motivation for our evangelistic efforts.
6. We pray to exercise spiritual gifts. Church growth occurs when members of the church exercise their diverse gifts in ministry. Dr. C. Peter Wagner teaches that there are 27 spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible, and they play an indispensable role in church growth. Pastors come to understand their spiritual gifts through prayer, and develop them through practice in ministry. When pastors have gained a clear understanding of spiritual gifts, they can train and equip lay people with spiritual gifts. Then the possibility of church growth is more than just a dream, it becomes a reality.
7. We pray to offer spiritual worship to God. A church cannot experience growth without spiritual worship. The church’s mission is not only to proclaim the gospel in the world, but to offer pleasing worship to God. God is seeking those who will worship him in spirit and truth (John 4:23). Furthermore, people are also seeking spiritual worship. Church is a house of prayer (Mark I l: 17), and people want to experience God in prayer. A spiritual worship that is permeated with prayer can bring physical, emotional, and spiritual healing – and that is when church growth will most likely occur. Lay members will increase their level of commitment when they have experienced God and are spiritually inspired.
Based upon my discovery and experience of prayer, I conclude that prayer is an indispensable ingredient for church growth. For instance, the Kwang Lim Methodist Church had 150 members in 1971. As a result of a prayer-based ministry there are now more than 85,000 members. I am sure that God will continue to cause churches to grow in the new millennium, but a question remains to be answered: who will claim the power and promise of prayer? (Mark 11 :22-24).
When this article was published in 2000, Sundo Kim was the senior pastor of Kwang Lim Methodist Church in Seoul, Korea and the director of the Kwang Lim Prayer Mountain. Throughout his illustrative ministry, he participated in many leadership roles. Dr. Kim served as adjunct professor to Asbury Theological Seminary, Methodist Theological Seminary, St. Paul Theological Seminary, United Theological Seminary, Wesley Theological Seminary, and Yonsei University. He served on many boards including the board of trustees of World Vision International.
by Steve | Jan 26, 2000 | Archive - 2000
Archive: Relocating the Church outside the Walls
By John Smith (1942-2019)
January/February 2000
Good News
For 35 years, I have been discovering that the world isn’t nearly as hostile to the gospel as I thought it would be. It is not nearly as frightening as we have been told it will be. Outside the walls of the church there are many people who want to be loved and would love to have a connection with someone that didn’t treat them like a prize to be won, but persons to be loved.
I was called to preach by God during the counter-culture days of the 1960s. I have spent most of my life rubbing shoulders with hippies, outlaw bikers, high school students, secular non-churched folk, artists, and just ordinary people. Sure, there are murderers and dangerous people out in the real world. But I have discovered that most people who look a bit scary are actually quite ordinary. At the same time, a lot of people who look very suave are actually very dangerous. The mafia doesn’t go around looking like hippies. They wear the best Italian suits. So if you are going to judge from appearances, you’ll fail from the start. As Jesus said, man looks on the outward appearance but God looks on the heart.
One of the great recent scandals of the Christian church was the way in which she dealt with the young people of the 1960s, those we now refer to as the post-war baby boomers. They were confused, lost, and experimenting. They cried out for help, but the church largely sat back and watched. I fear we will repeat our mistake with the new wave of postmodern kids. If we are not attentive to their heart’s cry, we could very easily miss an entire generation of young people searching for community, meaning, and spirituality.
How do we make sure that we don’t repeat the past? Although this may sound terribly simplistic, I think we have to do exactly what Jesus did: He relocated. He came and sat with us. The Bible says he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows. St. Peter testified that they beheld his glory when he went up on the mountain and saw the transfiguration. But they also beheld his humanity. The masses wouldn’t have beheld that as they did if Jesus had spent his time as a rabbi sitting in the synagogue.
Jesus did not say, “Come all ye sinners into the church to hear the gospel.” There are people who don’t get near the church. He did say, however, “Go ye into all the world to preach the gospel” to every “ethnos” – every culture and subculture.
Very simply, I take his command seriously. That is how I got involved in the lives of young people at rock concerts and outlaw bikers. I know that may sound incredible to some people. It’s not really all that weird. We just sit where they sit, and then the conversations come. It doesn’t take you long to be able to build a relationship. You can’t talk about a world out there if you don’t sit with them. You can’t make moral judgments of prostitutes if you never talk to them. You can’t castigate your teenage rock-and-roll kids if you never listen to their case. We have to listen, but first we must relocate. It has been said that we are meant to be in the world but not of it. Unfortunately, we may now be of the world and not in it.
I especially love working with people in pubs. I know of no place where people are more free to talk about their fears, sins, and failures. Not long ago, we were in a bar and we met a guy who was drinking himself to death because of some very serious problems in his life. He was about to go out to his pick-up and drive home when we offered to help him out. We said, “Hey man, you are not fit to go and drive that truck.” It turned out that he lived about an hour-and-a-half away. So one of my friends and I drove him home. We lost three hours of our day. All of his friends were saying, “What are you doing that for? He gets drunk like this all the time.” We told them that we didn’t want him to die, that we cared about him. A few days later, he was on the phone asking, “Why did you do that for me?”
Although I would love to win that brother to Christ, I would still do the same thing even if I knew he would never convert. Why? Because I know that is what Jesus would do. At the end of that day, what matters is whether we walk like Jesus in the world.
If I remember correctly, it was a clergyman of some distinction who said long ago that we must rediscover the fact in the church that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on a town garbage heap that was so cosmopolitan they had to list his name in several languages, in a place where men talked smut and where soldiers gambled for the only thing he possessed. That’s what Jesus was about and that’s what the church ought to be about.
In the late 1960s, we began a motorcycle club called God’s Squad. There was a great temptation in the early days for us to have a clubhouse like all the other motorcycle clubs. But I have always fought to say that our place is to be at the Hell’s Angels headquarters. After all, if all we did was hang out in our clubhouse we would never reach the outlaw bikers.
Several years ago, I was asked to perform a wedding at a Hell’s Angels concert. There were going to be roughly 20,000 outlaw bikers on a property where even the police weren’t technically allowed without a search warrant. Although it was going to be a rough place, that is not what worried me. I was dead-set scared about my reputation. I was concerned that my reputation would go right down the drain when my fellow clergy heard I did a wedding on the Hell’s Angels platform, with the best man being the vice president of the Hell’s Angels.
I already had fundamentalists writing savage articles against me, specifically about my music and long hair. I was worried I would be kicked out of the religious club. That’s frightening, especially when you’ve grown up in the church and your dad’s a minister and your granddad was a minister and it’s your home. I was very scared.
While I was talking to the young couple who wanted to be married, I asked them why they wanted their wedding at the Hell’s Angels concert. The young woman, who was raised Catholic, pointed to her companion’s arm. It was hanging there limp like a flipper, no action in it. She told me that while riding his motorcycle he had been run over by a very rich man in a Mercedes Benz.
Although the driver of the car was driving drunk on the wrong side of the road at high speeds, he was never charged because he had connections. The nerve endings in the biker’s shoulder were destroyed. “Nobody else cared and the guy got off scott-free,” she told me. “My man couldn’t work anymore and the only people who cared about us were the Hell’s Angels. They took us in and helped us when we had no money to feed our baby and all that stuff, so I want to be married there because they are the only people who cared.” It makes you wince a bit to hear a story like that.
“I will only marry you if you accept we have to do six sessions, at least an hour in length, on marriage and faith before you get married,” I said. “I won’t marry someone without taking that seriously.” She agreed and I showed up at her house. It was full of people.
“Is there a little room where we can go to talk!” I asked. She said, “We can talk here. These are our friends and all of them have been living together for years too, and they want to see what you’ve got to say because they might want to get married too.” So, I ended up giving intimate marriage counseling to this couple with all their friends listening in.
The night before the wedding, I was very troubled. I pulled an old stunt that John Wesley did on at least one occasion. I flipped the pages of the Bible open, hoping it would fall somewhere for guidance. It fell open in the Psalms and my eyes fell on the line, “where can I flee from your presence. Can I fly away by the wings of a dove! No there is nowhere I can go,” the psalmist says. And then he makes that extraordinary statement, “Though I make my bed in hell, … thou art there” (Psalm 139:8, KJV). I fell on my knees by the bed and said, “Lord if you are determined to be there I guess I’m coming too.” That was that.
It was a pretty wild time that weekend. There were times on stage where there were girls stripping – it was pretty gross. For the wedding, however, they stopped all the other commotion and had this ceremony at the center of it. I got on the stage and said, “I will quote to you the words of Australia’s most famous alcoholic.” Of course, all of these bikers began shouting, “Yea, Yea, Yea.” They couldn’t figure out where I was going with all of this.
There’s a great poet in Australia named Henry Lawson. He was an alcoholic and his marriage ended up dissolving. Lawson’s wife just got sick of him making promises and not keeping them. Nevertheless, he wrote a lot of poems about Jesus and he wrote one called “The Light of the World – the Crucifixion.” It’s got some rather hot lines in it because he was alienated by the church, but he was fascinated with Jesus. In his poem he said that if “Jesus came to earth once more, we would murder him again.” It’s a powerful poem about how self-righteous people killed the only hope of life.
I told the bikers, “You know he wrote a great poem in prison.” The poem was called “Keep Step 103.” He wrote poetry on the wall while in Darlinghurst Jail for drunk and disorderly behavior and a few other things. He said that despite all this horrible stuff, “the spirit of Christ is everywhere that a man can dwell. He comes like tobacco in prison or like news from a separate cell.”
I ended up giving that poem and talking to them about the fact there wasn’t anywhere that you wouldn’t find God. They could run their strip clubs and do what they liked, but God’s determined love was too big to be deflected by anything they could do. If ever there were words coming out of a drunk’s mouth that speak of the Methodist doctrine of prevenient grace, those did.
I also read a passage from I Corinthians 13. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” I could see the women near the stage wiping the tears from their eyes.
Not long ago, I was in a pub in Lexington, Kentucky, when someone asked me a startling question. He was a local alcoholic who had been through a breakup with his family. He watched me for weeks with this grin on his face and wasn’t sure what to make of me and my biker jacket that reads: “God’s Squad.” On this night he called me over, looked at me with tears in his eyes, and asked me, “Are you a Christian, or do you love Jesus?” It was all I could do not to burst into tears myself.
His question may not be fair, but it shows the way much of the world sees us. They think if you are a Christian you are in the judgment business, the self-righteous business, the exclusion business. They view the church as a club that is hard to get into and be accepted. That’s what they think. We have to destroy that myth.
The biggest problem is not taking the gospel to the people, but undoing the damage and wrong impressions of the past. Before most people will give the gospel a real hearing, we have to explode the secular myths. At the end of the day just buying bigger, better, fancier religious lifeboats (churches), so people can jump from one to another is not going to challenge secular America.
United Methodism is finished if it doesn’t take evangelism seriously. I don’t care what your theology is, it’s a matter of sheer human, social reality. The American culture is like a seething, crawling, cauldron of people just looking here, there, and everywhere trying to find some answers. We can’t just leave the pagans happy where they are. Making a greater income in the richest country on earth is not really doing much to stop people from having to live on pills. America is in trouble, profound trouble. It is a trouble of the soul. You aren’t going to change that by prosperity. It’s going to change according to what the people of God are doing down the street at that local church. The gospel is the only hope for America.
At the time of the publication of this article, John Smith (1942-2019) was the head of Care & Communication Concern and God’s Squad Christian Motorcycle Club in Australia. He was the author of several books including On the Side of the Angels. John was the senior minister of St. Martin’s Community Church in inner city Melbourne, and the superintendent minister of a network of independent and indigenous churches.
