For some time I have had an inclination that God would like us to start a focused prayer-ministry team.  We have prayer time at the church on Wednesday afternoons at 1:00pm and Friday mornings at 10:00am.  These are wonderful times and we share prayer requests and pray for people’s needs as we are made aware of them.

This is something I envision differently.

Once a month the prayer team will gather at the church for about one hour.  I think it will be a Sunday evening.  We will make our own church family and the broader community aware that we are gathering to pray for people who feel a need to be prayed over.  Tom, this means that the person in need of prayer would come that evening, for whatever the need might be an we would pray with/for them after the pattern of James 3:16.

“Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” (James 5:13–16, NIV84)

There most certainly will be nights when no one comes.  There will most certainly be prayers offered, seemingly unanswered. But we will most certainly not fail for having not asked.

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:1–3, NIV84)

This verse reminds me of ho important it is to be aware of the impediments of answered prayer but the bolded phrase is my primary concern as it comes to this prayer ministry team.  In unconscious ways we may have forsaken something vital that people of faith need to be engaged in.  Every day without fail, I see the brokenness in lives around us.  We live in a beautiful place, beset with the kinds of destructive attitudes and behaviours that shipwreck families and set a course for future hopelessness and despair.  I have no idea how to adequately respond to this as a spiritual family (church).  If we are truly the people of God, we know that change can only come when God intervenes in people’s lives.  The more we try to force and coerce change, the greater the gap becomes between us and our community.

Prayer ought not to be the thing that we do when we can do nothing else.  It ought to be the thing we do before we do anything else … a first response rather than a last resort.

If you read this and are interested in more info, whether you attend Community Life Church or elsewhere, contact me by email, karl.ingersoll@gmail.com or call the church 662-8454.  We’ll talk about the picture in a more detailed manner.

Personally I am desperate to see God do His thing in a brand new way, on Grand Manan Island in 2018.

Blessings to you and yours …