Every day Roots Uk starts with a knee drill.
8:30 am in the prayer tent.
I reckon that once you have deducted the prayer tent 'staff' there was on average an attendance of 25 delelgates at each prayer meeting.
I calculate that to be about 1/2 % of delegates.
Practicalities allowing that's still a pretty poor show...
Reminded me of the hard hitting Keith Green song, 'Asleep in the light'
"The world is sleeping in the dark,
That the church can't fight, cause it's asleep in the light,
How can you be so dead, when you've been so well fed,
Jesus rose from the grave, and you, you can't even get out of bed,
Oh, Jesus rose from the dead, come on, get out of your bed."
Prayer is the boiler house, without sacrificial prayer the ship can't even leave the dock let alone sail around the world.
Yours irrepressibly under Christ and over the devil
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6 comments:
I agree about prayer being all you say it is but don't be too hard on folks at Roots. It is a bit of a marathon and often a juggling exercise, especially for families to get everyone where they need to be. I actually think the practicalities are quite an issue.
Maybe there are too many other options in the programme to compete with prayer.
People come to Roots for all kinds of reasons but one of them is to experience worshipping a big God in a large setting, when week by week they battle on with a faithful few. In Cell Church parlance, the big wing event.
The prayer tent experience is small wing and intimate and most people can have that every week.
I haven't got any conclusions, just thinking out loud. Maybe the big top should be host to a "big" prayer session.
Hi Carol
It was an observation not a criticism. I'm not trying to be hard on anyone.
I used the term knee drill specifically because TSA used to preface all meetings with a knee drill. In particular, Sunday always started with a knee drill. In many ways the three days at Roots are all 'Sundays' and the morning prayer meeting reflects that.
I recognise that there are complications and therefore people can't make the 8.30 gathering, however, even taking that into consideration I think that 1/2 % is more a reflection of people's priorities rather than a figure limited by practicalities.
I reckon that the numbers for 'Good morning Roots' were about 1000 maybe even more - yet I bet if you replaced that with a prayer meeting that started at 9:15 numbers would be siginificantly lower.
Let's face it people don't find corporate prayer as exciting or as much fun as corporate praise.
Like you I would love to see more people seeking God in prayer at Roots but this event is not really where the problem lies, there is generally not as much prayer in the Army and in the Church as there should be. (There is much more since 24/7 emerged, thank God.)
Revival might sort it out but then prayer is often the precursor of revival breaking out.
So what is to be done?
These are just ramblng thoughts,
I certainly would like to see prayer put into the main event of our corporate life rather than as a fringe activity, for the really pious. Next week Alan and I are going to Birmingham to a national prayer event, where thousands will gather, just to pray.
Although there have been lots of calls to prayer from our leadership through the years, I can't remember there being a national prayer event on the scale of a congress or in these days a conference. Would Salvationists go to it? I don't know but at least it would show that we rate prayer as highly as we do music and preaching.
Why isn't prayer as an attractive proposistion as praise and worship?
Probably because we have allowed the congregation to become an audience, of which the only demand is to join in some enjoyable singing. Prayer suggests participation and risk.
Lots of prayer meetings have been really boring.
We have not exposed people to the richness of what real prayer is like.
I'll pray about it.
love and prayers
Carol
We went to the last trumpet call prayer thing in Birmingham and it was really good...were you there Carol?
Anyway, to add something...we've recently turned our evening meetings (our holiness meeting) to include more prayer.
Do you know what happened? Well, first of all the band stopped turning up to the evening meeting. Need I say more?
But we are still pressin on in prayer, convinced that prayer combined with adventurous evangelism will bring revival to our community.
Here in Riga we've made prayer a priority and still only a handful of people go to the prayer meeting before our Sunday service!
Your quote of the Keith Green song is certainly relevant!
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