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IT’S TIME TO CALL A PRAYER MEETING!
By Mel Walker
One blistering hot summer day in 1806, five students from Williams College in the far northeastern corner of Massachusetts met for their regular small group prayer meeting. On this particular day a late afternoon thunderstorm forced the group to take shelter under a nearby haystack as one of the students, Samuel Mills, challenged the group to prayerfully consider a mobilization of students for worldwide missions. This simple prayer meeting was to become the catalyst for what has been called “the Second Great Awakening” and perhaps the largest student missions endeavor ever – the Student Volunteer Movement. (It’s interesting to note that this sense of revival in America coincided with the ministry of leading evangelical voices in England such as John Wesley and William Wilberforce – who has gained popularity of late from the release of the “Amazing Grace” movie just a few years ago.) According to historians who have chronicled this student missions phenomenon, close to 20,000 foreign missionaries sprang out of this student-led revival.
Listen to one observation about this period in history, “(These) were exciting times. England was an industrial giant with great colonial pride. In America, the Civil War has accelerated the progress of the Industrial Revolution. Rail travel across the continent was becoming commonplace, and by 1898 half the world’s railroad mileage was in the United States. The last frontier in the Middle West was closing. Thomas Edison and others were perfecting the telegraph and telephone and developing uses for electricity. The phonograph, kinetoscope, and stereopticon were providing entertainment and spreading popular culture. Cities were growing, and they were filled with young people. Those developments prepared the climate for a new era of Christian youth movements.” (See The Complete Book of Youth Ministry, edited by Warren Benson and Mark Senter III, published by Moody Press, p. 63.)
The culture and technology are quite different today, but the similarities between what happened then and what is happening today are staggering. Rapid technological advances, world-wide commerce, and instantaneous international communication have created one global community. As never before, the world’s cities are experiencing incredible population growth and this planet is literally filled with young people!
It’s time to call another prayer meeting like the one I described above that spawned a world-wide student-led revival of missionary interest.
Our Lord Himself challenged His disciples to pray that way in Matthew 9:37 & 38, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest”, and in Luke 10:2, “The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.”
It’s amazing to me that our Lord’s strategy to reach this world then and now is that we must pray that He would send laborers. That’s it: pray. There was no other plan listed. Sure, our Lord identified His “Great Commission” outreach philosophy (Matt. 28:19, 20) to make disciples in all nations. However, His original challenge was for His followers to pray that He would send forth harvest workers.
I just took a casual look through my own personal travel schedule for the past ten years. According to my rough calculations I visit somewhere around thirty different churches each year speaking and ministering to teenagers, youth workers, parents, and Christian workers. That means that I have visited over three hundred different churches around this country in the past ten years. These churches have ranged in size from those that average thousands in attendance to those with a small handful of people. To be brutally honest with you, I only remember a couple of very rare occasions where I’ve heard God’s people pray for more harvest workers.
Prayer is God’s only strategy for increasing the number of harvest workers, but we very rarely do it!
When was the last time your church prayed for more harvest workers?
We pray for our current missionaries to be sure. I’ve had the opportunity to participate in some amazing prayer meetings where God’s people rallied behind various missionaries serving around the world. It’s thrilling to see the local body of Christ gather to pray specifically for the needs of current missionaries. But when was the last time we prayed specifically for new harvest workers?
It’s time to call another prayer meeting!
I really believe that the Lord can use students again to literally impact the world for eternity. But, it must start with prayer.
It’s important to note that God is still calling people into fulltime vocational ministry. The world-wide need is greater now than ever. God’s plan is still that His people must pray for “the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his harvest.”
Join with church leaders all around the world in Vision For Youth’s “Harvest Sunday” campaign on October 9, 2011 in some intentional and specific prayer for a new generation of harvest workers! More details will be announced soon, but for the time being, put this date on your church calendars now and plan to host another prayer meeting that day.
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