Seven%20Changes%20in%20the%20Wake%20of%20the%20Coronavirus.pdf

This White Paper was released early in the first few weeks of the quarantine. It is a call for changes, a view that God is speaking to us, and calling us to change. 

October 31, 2017 was 500 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. Barbara and I were in Berlin for a meeting of several hundred global leaders there to mark that date. It was my privilege to lead morning prayer sessions at that gathering. We then made our way to Wittenberg and to Castle Church for the 500th year celebration. The church was packed and the moment was unforgettable.

From Wittenberg, Barbara and I drove to Herrnhut, Germany.…

There are three kinds of churches. Some churches pray when there is a crisis. Other churches have a prayer ministry among other ministries. Finally, there are churches that seek to bring prayer to the center of every ministry, to everything the church strives to do and be. They want to become a house of prayer for the nations.¹

First, we can no longer pray only about our needs. Second, prayer can never be a program in the church. Further, prayer…

A 300 year old church in Massachusetts faced a major challenge. Its ‘young people’ were in their ‘60’s. Their annual budget was $15,000. Most neighbors who passed the drab building with a drive-in congregation thought the church was closed. The neighborhood was now an Italian and Jewish enclave unlike the congregation of forty people with no Jews and one Italian. The church had no bridge to the community and no presence in its neighborhood. It was seen as having no value by…

The priests in the Old Testament were assigned, as were the Levites, to cities. They were required to live there. Priestly ministry was never confined exclusively to the temple. Priests were not to become other worldly. Ray Bakke, sociologist and missiologist, says that twenty-five types of urban ministry can be found in the historical books of the Old Testament, and they were carried on by the priests. They were agents of health care, there to eradicate plagues and to certify cleanliness…

One urban pastor used the following procedure with new members. He asked, “How did you come to Christ?” It was not the church to which he wanted to connect them, as much as to Christ Himself. He wanted to hear their ‘Jesus’ story! He asked a second questions, “What were the circumstances that led to your faith in Christ?” He wanted them to think through the events that brought them to Christ – to see His guiding and pervasive hand in their lives. Third, he asked about their most enjoyable…

What are the barriers to our fulfillment of the Great Commission?

1. A lack of organized prayer for the city.
2. The absence of congregational missional training.
3. The lack of vision or a burden for the lost.
4. The rural mentality, even of city churches.
5. The failure to steward witnessing opportunities – an almost total lack of evangelism consciousness.
6. The disconnect of Christians from non-Christians – the insulation of believers into comfortable…

In a culture where the individual is everything, a congregational prayer meeting is perceived simply, as a lot of individuals in the same room praying. Sadly, we are blind to the critical importance of corporate prayer. We fail to see the difference between the individual’s right and privilege of prayer, not to diminish its value or power, and corporate prayer, from the office of the church.

Eugene Peterson lamented,

The single most widespread American misunderstanding of…

There are two billion people who call themselves Christians. Of those, only 680 million (11.5 percent) are Evangelicals or Bible reading Christians. Our task is to wake up 1.3 billion sleeping Christians and simultaneously reach the other 4.5 billion people on the earth. Those billions live in 200 nations, but more importantly, in 16,597 Major People Groups. According to data from the…