Using PrayerMate for Corporate Prayer

We have recently had a big push on corporate prayer as a church at Woodgreen. As part of this we have re-worked our prayer programmes and tried to flex a little more to the increased pressures and time-demands of what has become much more of a 24-7 culture in the last decade.

Corporate prayer as a church is important because it's one of the ways in which individual Christians in a church unite together to seek God around a common vision and calling. Corporate prayer is much more than gathering with people from church in order to pray for church needs. It is uniting as a whole church to pray for the same church needs.

That difference is subtle but important when you start thinking about how to reshape a church corporate prayer programme so that it's fit for purpose in todays culture - because it means that with good communication, we don't all have to be in the same room.

For many years the traditional mid-week church prayer meeting has been the almost exclusive expression of corporate prayer in free churches. However the increased demands of work and family life have made this more and more difficult for many to attend. Whether we agree with this or not - this is a fact of life in most churches.

As a Pastor I have a choice faced with this fact: I can either decide to bang the prayer meeting drum harder (and motivate people to be there primarily out of guilt) OR I can work harder to clarify the principles behind my conviction that corporate prayer is important and motivate creative alternative ways for people to plug into it.

We've come up with a raft of new ideas at Woodgreen to help raise the profile of corporate prayer in the church and make it easier for people to plug into it. However one of the central planks to our new strategy is a monthly 'Together in Prayer' sheet, which contains two, three or at the most four foci for prayer each month, one of which is always one of our church missionaries.

A crude analogy I sometimes use for corporate prayer is a tug of war. Corporate prayer is when the whole church unites in prayer to all pull in the same direction. That's how tug of wars are won!

Whether we're on our own, or in a prayer triplet, or in a prayer group, or in a central midweek prayer meeting, we pray corporately when we pull together with our brothers and sisters in the 'same directions' in prayer.

This is what makes our 'Together in Prayer' sheet so powerful: it releases corporate prayer from the constraints of a midweek prayer meeting (which it was never possible for everyone in church to be at anyway) and frees people to pray corporately in a whole variety of contexts. Incidentally, we've also found it has significantly increased the numbers at our midweek prayer meeting.

One of the tools I've come across that I've found a real help in prayer is the PrayerMate App. It's available in all it's glory for iphone and ipad, and with slightly lesser functionality for Android phones and tablets (the aim is to have equal functionality across both platforms very soon). It's basically taken the concept of a prayer diary and made it digital. It's a great simple idea and incredibly useful.

The iphone and ipad version also allows you to subscribe to online prayer feeds from various Christian organisations and missionary agencies. Want to pray for Barnabus Fund or Open Doors? Subscribe to their online prayer feed and you will get a fresh prayer point from them every day within PrayerMate. You can also customise your own lists and categories and pray for family, friends, church, work  etc etc. You can even link it up with dropbox and download prayer letters from the Christian workers you support. It's a brilliant app.

And now - TRUMPET FANFARE - you can also subscribe to a prayer feed from Woodgreen Church as well, which is basically our Together in Prayer sheet split up over 7 days. Go to the online prayer feeds page, click on UK churches and there we are.

So there you go. Even if you're a technology addict there's now no excuse NOT to pray!

You can get the PrayerMate app from the itunes or Play store and it's currently FREE.

Should a Christian fast?

At our Sunday evening service today I spoke  on the subject of fasting. We've been doing a series of talks on prayer based on Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6 and the task of speaking on verses 16-18 fell to me.

When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 

Do Jesus' words here mean that fasting is something every Christian should do?

As I prepared, I realised this is a more controversial issue among Christians than I had at first appreciated. Bible-believing Christians have different views on this subject. Books have been written about it. Sermons have been preached on it. Movements have been based on it.

It also became apparent that there was no way I was going to be able to tackle the subject adequately in a Sunday evening sermon. 

So, initially for my own benefit, but now also for those who want to explore the issue further, I've put my own conclusions into a briefing paper. There's a link for this below and you are welcome to download and read it. 

The first half of the paper is a fuller version of the talk I gave on Sunday evening, which is an overview - an attempt at a biblical theology if you like - of fasting in the Bible. The second half of the paper explores some of the questions this raises and nuances the conclusion I arrived at a little more.

You can download the briefing paper: 'Should a Christian Fast?' HERE.

DIRECT LINK: https://www.dropbox.com/s/swd5s9xl7txutg4/Should%20a%20Christian%20Fast_RLacey_Feb2014.pdf

Infographic: Bible Reading and UK Families

The Bible Society published a fascinating study this week into UK families and the Bible. It was timed to coincide with the launch of their new 'Pass it On' campaign, to encourage parents to read, watch or listen to a Bible story with their child. 

Between 10th-13th January this year, pollsters YouGov, on behalf of the Bible Society, surveyed over 1000 parents of British children aged between 3-16, and over 800 children aged 8-15. They asked them whether they read, watched or listened to stories from the Bible and if so how often. They also tested to see if they recognised what Christians might have assumed were well known Bible stories.

The results only serve to underline what we already know: that the UK is now a post-Christian, biblically illiterate society, where we cannot take even basic Bible knowledge for granted.

As a Christian I believe it is the basic human right of every person on the planet to read God's Word. The Bible Society's research suggest that millions of children in the UK are being denied that right. 

While Christians have always had a right and proper commitment to taking the good news of the gospel to the whole world, this report reminds us again that we have a massive job to do right on our doorstep.

Initiatives like the Bible Society's 'Open the Book' are great ways in which local Christians can take the Bible into schools. A  team from Woodgreen does this regularly in our local primary school. The reports from children and staff alike are that the children engage with this and love hearing Bible read to them. You can find out more about Open the Book HERE.

You can read and download the whole report for free HERE.

But I've pulled out what I felt were the stand out statistics in the infographic below.

If you want to download a higher resolution version of it you can do so HERE.

Direct Links: 
http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/uploads/content/projects/Bible-Society-Report_030214_final_.pdf
http://www.openthebook.net/home.php
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u0cwa3fucs5fwnt/Pass%20it%20On%20Infographic%20FINAL_HI%20RES.jpg