EDITOR’S NOTE: “Love Your Neighbor/Share Christ” evangelism strategy is written and designed to assist you as a church leader in developing a contextualized strategy to carry out significant parts of the Great Commission, with a focus toward the evangelism part of it. The strategy employs six expressions, which are detailed in separate posts.
A Global Mission Church member prays for a woman during a recent mission trip to the Dominican Republic.
Evangelism is not just an intellectual or mental or emotional engagement, it is a spiritual battle, where Satan and his forces are working against the very work the church is trying to do. They do not want to see more people give their lives to Christ and are working toward confusing and disrupting the work of the saints.
Evangelizing lost people is a spiritual battle, so we pray for the lost by name. We are inviting God’s Spirit to move and we are coming against the schemes of the enemy to confuse, distort, and lie to those without Christ. As we pray for them, we not only engage the enemy by seeking the Lord on behalf of the lost person, we also increase our sensitivity to the needs of the person without Christ.
[boxify cols_use =”2″ cols =”4″ position =”right” box_spacing =”10″ padding =”10″ background_color =”#EBF0F5″ border_width =”3″ border_color =”#336699″ border_style =”solid” ] GOALS/TARGETS:
1 Each believer praying for at least one lost person (family member, neighbor, work associate, classmate, etc.).
2 Each believer praying for themselves toward eyes to see, greater love and boldness.
3 Each church saturating their community in prayer, seeking creative ways to touch hearts, homes, and the harvest.
PASSAGES:
Matthew 9:37-38; Luke 10:2; Romans 10:1; Acts 17:16-17, 23; 26:29; 1 Thessalonians 3:12; 2 Thessalonians 3:1-3; 1 Timothy 2:1-4; Philemon 6, Ephesians 6:10-20;
2 Timothy 1:7-8
TOP PRACTICES:
• Use a 3×5 card or another prepared card on which to write names of people who are lost that you can pray for specifically—by name.
• Prayer Walk neighborhoods around the church and in the community. Include the schools in your area as well as other touch points (police, fire, government, businesses, nursing homes, etc).
• Prayer Partners (or Triplets) pray together for specific lost people by name and pray for each other to have courage from the Holy Spirit.
ACTION PLAN:
• Consider one or multiple ways you can engage your church in praying for lost people by name both in groups and individually.
• Consider putting people into prayer triplets to both pray for each other’s boldness and spiritual sensitivity as you jointly pray for lost people.[/boxify]
Praying for lost people can involve individual prayer, corporate prayer, and prayer in Sunday school classes or small groups. It can be prayer any place—a quiet time at home, prayer with a prayer partner, even praying in the harvest field through prayer walking a neighborhood, a business area, a school, etc.
We pray not only for lost people, we pray for ourselves and others to have eyes to see with compassion and boldness. We ask God to give us the words to say at the right time.
Global Mission Church seeks 24-hour/day prayer
Manpoong “Dennis” Kim, senior pastor of Global Mission Church in Silver Spring, Md., believes in prayer. So much so, he has led an intercessory prayer project, recruiting volunteers to set aside one hour a week to pray for the lost, the church and other concerns.
The church has three prayer rooms set up for this purpose. One room is open to any member who wants to come in and pray any time. The second room is equipped with five seats and the third room with two for the intercessory prayer project.
His goal is to have 24-hour a day coverage spread throughout the whole week, and though not all the hours are covered, there are many people involved in the important times.
Some people pray Monday through Saturday at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. and at 4:30 a.m., which Kim calls the “Holy Hour” because of the number of faithful participants. The regular prayer hour is at 5:30 a.m.
On Saturdays and Sundays, the prayer rooms are crowded with prayer servants, he said. Some people come in late afternoon, and others spend an hour in prayer after work each day. The intercessors follow a prayer guide provided by the church and are trained ahead of time on how to pray.
“We see God working with us in that way,” Kim said.
You will find additional information on our website, www.bcmd.org/loveyourneighbor. Tools will be there for your use in each area of the Expressions in various forms such as print, web, and video. You will find sermon starters, Sunday School lessons, and much more.