Engage the City: Prayer | Church Planting Like a Missionary | Tony Merida, Brian Bloye

(soft music) - Brian, as we think about the missionary task, the missionary task of church planters and engaging the city with the gospel, making disciples and planting churches, we begin where the apostles began, engaging the city with the gospel. And one of the key aspects of that is prayer. - [Brian] Yeah.

- Of seeking the Lord in prayer as we go. When we're in the middle of conversations, you know, we never really move on from prayer. - Right.

- Right, we're always seeking the Lord of the harvest. - Yeah. - And so in one sense, it's no surprise to think that prayer is essential when it comes to this task of engaging the city with the gospel.

So why have we emphasized specifically devotion to prayer in the mission of church planting? - Yeah, I love it. You know, I think first of all, prayers is a frontline strategy, Tony.

It's not an add-on, it's not an accessory. It's the engine. It really is the engine that I think drives the missional task.

And, you know, one thing I think that we forget sometimes is that church planning is spiritual warfare. I mean, we're engaging the battle of, you know, going after souls that Satan would love to just grab hold of. And we're in the trenches fighting for marriages, we're fighting for men, we're fighting for students, and women who are just being pulled at every way.

So, I mean, the only way you're gonna engage spiritual warfare like that is through prayer. And then I think the other thing is we, I think we just naturally drift towards self-reliance. We, you know, I think prayer brings us back to dependence on God.

And I think that that's the only way that we're truly gonna be effective is to just be completely dependent upon God. And then, you know, if you look the early church in the Book of Acts, it started with prayer and that was the pattern. And I think we wanna follow that pattern.

And I think in an age of over programming, in an age of, you know, under praying, we want to build spirit filled, empowered movements, not manmade institutions. And so, prayer's a key. You know, we say around our church in Dallas, Georgia that nothing of eternal significance happens apart from prayer.

So it is so important to the missionary task. - Yeah, I think about Psalm 1:27, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. " - [Brian] Exactly.

- Like we have to stay in this posture. - [Brian] Yeah. - Of depending on God.

And we never graduate from that. - [Brian] No, never, never. - You know, the older I get, the more more convinced I am of.

- Absolutely. - Of this reality. So when we think about church planters and church planting teams being devoted to prayer, what does this look like in real time, just personally and as a community?

- Yeah, well, I think from a personal standpoint, just for the planter, there has to be a commitment to a daily focused time. Just in prayer. And, you know, if you want your church to be a praying church, as a pastor, you have to be a praying man.

And it is not an add-on. It is not something that you can delegate to another staff member. I mean, you have to own this.

If you want prayer to truly be a value that your church really embraces, this has to be something that I think you drive. And it is, we have to focus our time with God, not just for God. This can't be praying for our sermon, praying for our prep time.

This is how we truly connect with the Father. And, you know, we go back to what I said earlier. I mean, this is how we truly stay self, you know, self-reliant on the Lord.

And so I think personally, this has to be something that is, that we own deep inside of our hearts. We have to be men of prayer if we wanna see God move in power. And then I think just, you know, as it relates to our community, you know, and how do we truly impact our community?

Not just as a pastor, but as a church. I think we have to build some prayer rhythms into what we do. We start every meeting off in prayer.

One of the things I love about, you know, you and I are connected, obviously, you know, VP roles with the Send Network. I mean, there's not a meeting that we go into that doesn't, you know, first start with prayer. We started this off with prayer.

- [Tony] Yeah. - And that's one of the things I love about, you know, what we do here. But I also recognize, you know, at my church and at your church, every meeting that we start, you know, needs to be absolutely bathed in prayer.

I think we have to have a very solid strategy on how we're going to truly become a house of prayer, a church that prays, a church that impacts the community. 'Cause it doesn't just happen. You gotta be strategic about it.

And then, you know, one of the things that we've talked about over the years at our church is not just, you know, having a prayer night, prayer, you know, gatherings, times, you know, where we start meetings with prayer, you know, times where we're just installing prayer together. But we've gotta do things that are very intentional. Like, you know, I remember early on with our church plant, we did a lot of prayer walks.

We would focus on neighborhoods. We would focus on schools. And we would just prayer walk.

Matter of fact, this past Saturday, our church adopted every single school, not only in our county, but also in in West Cobb, and showed up on Saturday. And prayer walked the halls if, you know, the school would let us, and most of 'em did, which was great. I know that's unique, but I think it just puts, you know, prayer in the forefront of people's minds.

And it's a strategy. I know for my wife and I personally, and it's something that we share with our church, is we have prayer walk together most mornings since 2016, around our church, around different places. And it's just something that's drawn us closer together.

But I think it's something that our church is caught on to as well. And so we hear about, you know, our missions teams go to Scotland and they spend almost an entire day prayer walking. Or they go to Guatemala and they're prayer walking the village that we've adopted.

So you have to prioritize prayer as a core team value. It's not just a launch phase activity. It has to be a value that you start with and you stay with.

And that carries over into the history of your church, because we just drift and we've got it. It's our job as pastors to keep it at the forefront and to stay red hot as it relates to being a praying pastor. A praying man, praying dad, praying father.

- Yeah. - Yeah. - I've said before, when people ask if you could do one thing over again, what would you do?

- [Brian] Yes. - I would do many things differently. - [Brian] Yeah.

- But one of them is when we gathered as a core team, I think what I would do now is alternate each week, what, you know, team building, teaching, and then the off week is prayer. - [Brian] Yep. - So that we begin to build a pattern.

- Yeah. - Of there are times that's all we're doing. - Yeah, I love that.

- And it's really hard, you know, when you're scheduling meetings and you're gonna start with a devotion or prayer that that can become kind of perfunctory. - Yeah. - It can just sort of routine.

We do this now with our elders. We have a call every Thursday morning, but once a month. It's just praying for people in our small groups.

And that's been such a tremendous blessing. - [Brian] Yeah. - You know, one of the other things I think that's a benefit of being a praying people, especially as you think about a church plant, is sometimes there's conflict in the church on teams.

And it's much harder to be at odds with people when you're sitting next to them praying for them. - [Brian] Exactly. - Right?

- [Brian] Yeah, you're right. It's like a marriage really. Like when you are praying together, it really opens up all sorts of blessings.

- [Brian] Yeah. - Right? That you're not even thinking about.

- [Brian] Right. - And so, you know, don't overthink it. - [Brian] Yeah.

- Just be devoted to it. - Yeah. - And see what the Lord does through it.

- Yeah, and you're really hearing people's hearts when you're praying next to them. - Yeah. - And you're hearing things that you're probably not gonna hear just in a casual conversation.

- A hundred percent. - And so, you know, one thing, you know, Tony, that I've discovered, and I know you have discovered this as well, is a lot of young pastors really don't know how to create a strategy for prayer. - Yeah.

- They don't know how to not only create a strategy for prayer for their church, but for their personal life. And one of the partnerships that we have with Send Network is 6:4 Fellowship. I've been through that coaching.

I know a lot of our guys have been through that coaching. It's something that we offer, and I think that it's just valuable to just go, you know, I'm not really sure exactly how to do this. - [Tony] Yeah.

- And I need some coaching to help me develop, not just a personal strategy, but a strategy for my church that impacts the community. - Yeah, yeah. My mentor who was just, you know, a model of intercessory prayer, Jim Shaddock.

- Yeah. - Went to be with the Lord this year. Well, he emphasized this so much, and one of the things he would often talk about is how seminary curriculum doesn't have courses, usually, on prayer.

- [Brian] Exactly. - And he would always point out 6:4. - [Brian] Yeah.

- And he would say, "What if we just modeled the school after Ministry of the Word, Ministry of Prayer? " - [Brian] Yeah. - And those were your courses.

- [Brian] Yeah. - You had a prayer, or class on Thanksgiving. A class on supplication, you know?

A class on lament. - [Brian] Yeah. And he would say that to sort of provoke our thought, but I think it's very important to see.

Like the early church, this was not a supplemental activity. - Right. - It was an essential activity.

- It was the work. - It was the work. - Absolutely.

- Yeah. - Yeah. - So how can planners keep devotion and zeal for prayer from dwindling throughout the various stages?

You mentioned that in the church plan. What counsel would you give them on how to keep a heart for prayer throughout the life of the church? - Yeah, I will say this again.

Stay desperate. Stay desperate. Don't let growth replace desperation.

Don't let activity replace desperation. - [Tony] Yeah. - Just, you know, I I've just come to realize over the years, you know, if I don't stay desperate, sometimes God will allow me to go into places or lead me into moments where he's going to drunk, you know?

- Make you desperate. - Drve me back to my knees and make me desperate. He wants us there.

You know, it's where we just, you know, experience this rich communion with him. - [Tony] Yeah. - And so I would just say, you know, don't ever lose that desperation.

- [Tony] Yeah. - Don't lose that intimacy. Continue to abide.

You know, Jesus says, "Apart from me, you can do nothing. " And we just have to keep going back to that going. On my best day, in my own efforts, I'm nothing without the Lord.

- Right on. - And so, say, stay desperate. And then I would just say, you know, fight the drift.

You have to schedule rhythms, not just daily, but weekly, monthly. I get up early in the morning. I have a routine that I go through.

But it is the way that I connect with the Lord. If I miss it, I feel empty and somewhat naked throughout the day. And you have to prepare for it the night before.

You know, you just, I think about what I wanna do in the morning. I put my books where I want 'em to be. I have my prayer journal where I want it to be, so I'm not looking for it, scrambling in the dark, trying to find things.

If you're gonna be serious about this, I lay things out the night before, preparing to get up in the morning. Grab my coffee, and I just sit in the same chair with my journal, my Bible. I got a dog sitting next to me.

And it's just a routine. It's what I do. And so, you know, you have to schedule rhythms.

And then I would say, I would encourage, you know, to just continue to to work in those fasting days, to work in those prayer retreats, maybe to have a day out of the month. For me, it's the first Monday of every month. I just, I devote that day to prayer.

And so you just have to put it on the schedule. You have to make it a priority, and you just have to, you have to fight the drift. Because the drift, once we get busy, once, there's a lot of activity, once you experience growth, once, you know, everybody's got your cell phone number, sometimes prayer's the first thing to go.

And we have to make it the priority. And then I would just say, surround yourself with people that make you spiritually sharp. Have people in your life that when you're with them, then they just challenge you.

That you just walk away from him and go, "Man, I just wanna be closer to the Lord. " I want to get back to, you know, being a man who's desperate in prayer. I mean, you just need to have people in your life that when you are with them, you walk away going, I wanna learn what he knows.

- [Tony] Yeah. - I want to walk in the intimacy that he's experiencing. And so, I've always tried to have a few people in my life that, you know, man, they're just some of the most Jesusy people that I've ever been around in my life.

And I just want some of that. And then keep planting, keep reproducing. Multiplication drives you to your knees.

You cannot be a multiplying church. You really can't have the kingdom, you know? Just coming through in all the things that you're doing unless you're connected to the king.

And how do we stay connected to the kingdom, obviously the word and prayer. And if I'm gonna stay in line with what God has called me to do, which is to make disciples, to expand his kingdom, even to lead our church, to be a multiplying church, not building my own kingdom, not trying to, you know, make a name for myself. I have to stay on my knees.

I have to humble myself, stay on my knees. And when I'm doing that, he's just pouring what he wants into me. And all of a sudden multiplying his kingdom becomes more important than anything else I got go going on in some shadow mission of my life.

- And so, you know, the moment you stop praying, I feel like the moment you, kinda, the power begins to drift. The moment you stop praying, I think you start building monuments instead of movements. And I think if we're gonna become multiplying kingdom minded people in line with the heart of the Lord, we have to stay on our knees desperate for him in just in, in just a abiding, dwelling, remaining relationship with him.

And it's prayer. Prayer's the key. - It's a good word, bro.

- [Brian] Yeah. - Instructive and inspiring. - Yeah, thanks Tony.