Prayer is key to bringing spiritual growth and change in the church, the Free Methodist Church USA bishops said on a recent episode of “The Light + Life Podcast.”
Host Brett Heintzman — who serves as both the denominational communications director and the co-director of the National Prayer Ministry — asked the bishops, “How would you like to see the culture of the FMC change in regard to prayer?”
In our local churches and our small groups, Bishop Kenny Martin said, “Prayer should be our driving force to guide us in our meetings, and it begins with personal prayer. … If we’re going to see change in prayer, it begins with us as individuals.”
Martin encouraged local church members to pray for one another — including in prayer bands or accountability groups. He pointed to the biblical command to: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10 NIV).
“A lot of times, I think we make decisions, but we don’t be still and really spend time with God,” said Martin, who encouraged a deeper level of prayer by meditating on God’s Word day and night (Psalm 1:2). He added that spending time in prayer will lead to agreement within the church (Amos 3:3). “Prayer is the highest priority for us to move forward as the church.”
Bishop Kaye Kolde echoed Martin’s call for decision-making to flow from prayer. She said that as bishops spend time in different Free Methodist settings, “we recognize that prayer needs to be more than the cursory beginning of a gathering. It needs to be a time when we really are pausing to listen.”
Kolde said she increasingly hears people teach about listening prayer, “but very rarely do I hear that groups in the church — leadership groups — are practicing group discernment where listening to God is a beginning point.”
It may be uncommon for groups to discern God’s will by coming together to discuss what the Spirit is confirming among the group members, but Kolde said, “I would love that to be really who we are and how we go about pursuing our leadership, and I’m always disturbed when we gather and we’re more of a business meeting than the people of God.”
She said we should be “beginning in prayer, bathing things in prayer, learning to grow in prayer with one another, and also one thing that I hope to see in the culture of the Free Methodist Church is that when we pause and take time to praise God, that we could do that for more than three to four minutes. … We so infrequently just pause and praise God for His character, because very often we’re going right to our needs, and so there are certain ways in which I think our holiness is reflected in how we pray as a larger denomination.”
Some local churches may only give a brief time for prayer near the beginning or end of a worship service, and church board meetings may include a scheduled moment of prayer. In contrast, Bishop Keith Cowart said prayer should be “a part of the culture of everything we do” — not something “we only think of as an agenda item.”
Cowart explained, “Prayer is not simply us lifting up our needs or concerns to God. It truly is seeking the heart of God and seeking the voice of God and what God wants to speak to us.”
God-Given Revelation
Heintzman asked the bishops to share a passage on which they have been meditating and how that passage relates to the church.
“The one passage that has been in my heart is 2 Chronicles 7:14, and it says, ‘If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sins and heal their land,’” Martin said. “It’s about restoration. It’s also evident that we need a healing in our land and around the world. There are a lot of hurting people around the world.”
Cowart referred to John 17 “when Jesus prays for His disciples, but He makes it really clear that He’s not just praying for the Twelve. He’s praying for all who will believe because of their message, which very much includes us, and it is a prayer for the people of God. It’s a prayer for the church, and the heart of it is unity.”
Kolde said she loves “how the worship in the Spirit and in truth through prayer actually strengthens our unity.” She discussed Luke 11:1–13 with its mention of “shameless audacity” (v.8 NIV) and added, “I want to be a person who prays with shameless audacity. I know I can ask the Father for anything — anything in His will — as impossible as it might seem.”
She also prays the Psalms and sometimes does so with the other bishops. She pointed to the reminder in Psalm 145 “that the Lord is righteous in all His ways and faithful in all He does. The Lord is near to all who call on Him.”
Words for the Church
Heintzman asked the bishops if there have been moments in their times of personal prayer where they “heard from the Lord a word, and that word was for the church at large. … How have you been hearing from the Lord, and what is He saying? What words has He given you?”
Cowart replied that he recently sensed the Lord giving him the word boldness: “I heard it more as a word for me, but perhaps it could be for the denomination as a whole. … These are days where we need to be courageous, and we need to be bold. We need to be bold in who we are and what we’re asking God to do, what we believe God wants to do, and bold in leading out of that. … The urgency and the need for boldness that I’m sensing is not one that’s fear-driven. It’s not an urgency that’s coming out of crisis. It’s an urgency that’s coming out of hunger and yearning for a deep, profound move of God — a deep desire for more. … It’s a time for boldness in our leadership and in our prayers.”
Kolde said she “was really struck in prayer one day” with a word for her and “potentially a word for us” regarding the biblical account of the feeding of the 5,000. She noted Matthew’s version of the miracle (Matthew 14:13–21) “says Jesus had compassion on these crowds, and He began healing them. In one of the other versions, the compassion is also tied to the fact that these people are hungry.” She considered that we could decide we don’t have enough resources and answers to help all the hungry people in the world, “but I want to follow the example that Christ gave, which is bring what you do have and bring an offering. … The word for me was: Do not throw up your hands and say, ‘There’s nothing we can do here.’ Instead bring the offering, and ask God to bless it and multiply it.”
Martin said he is reluctant to share a prophetic word unless he clearly hears from the Lord, “but in my heart, for such a time as this, you know we’re called to be people of faith. Especially in this transition [as] we talk about networking of conferences, we have to trust in the Lord.” He added, “When we say that this is a prophetic word from the Lord that has been seasoned in times of prayer and consecration … we’re not just saying it because we’re bishops. We’re saying it because we’ve been with God.”
The bishops have called the church to faithful prayer and “seeking together,” including a monthlong time of prayer and fasting last year.
“It’s my prayer that as we talk about ‘seeking together,’ we will hear a prophetic voice from our Lord,” Martin said. “It’ll come to you individually and maybe in a small group where we are really seeking God.”
Seeking Together Gatherings
This year, the Free Methodist Church USA will host three Seeking Together Gatherings in August: Aug. 7–8 at The Arbor Church in Spring Arbor, Michigan; Aug. 21–22 at Christ Community Church in Columbus, Georgia; and Aug. 28–29 at Commission Church in Rancho Cucamonga, California.
“I am hoping and expecting that we experience the powerful presence of our loving Father, and that there would be breakthroughs for people in that space, and that we might see healings in that space and reconciliation in that space where we seek God together,” Kolde said.
Martin said the bishops do not want the gatherings to just be “another event.” They instead want the gatherings to be “communing with God.” He added, “For me, it’s not this onetime gathering, but it will continue in our local churches.”
Plans for the gathering “began to come together for us as we recognized we’ve been saying now for several years we want to see a Spirit-fueled movement in our denomination, and we are deeply, deeply aware that that’s not something we can create in our own strength,” Cowart said. “We recognize there’s a cost to that. There’s a challenge to that, but we would invite you to really pray about coming to one of these and being physically present. … We believe that these gatherings really could spur activity in the spiritual realm that would reveal areas of where we need to repent, that would expose idols and would give us vision for what God wants to do.”
Click here for more information and to register for the Seeking Together Gatherings.