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Editorial
A National Call to Prayer for UM Renewal
by James V. Heidinger II

In less than two months, nearly 1,000 delegates will converge on Fort Worth, Texas to do the business of United Methodism’s 2008 General Conference. These once-every-four-year legislative gatherings are the means by which the United Methodist Church speaks officially. It is also a time when we can discern the direction and trends within our denomination. Are we living and proclaiming our Scriptural message and standards more faithfully? Or are we continuing our accommodation to the norms of a secular, materialistic, indulgent society?

Most of you know that Good News will be present with a team of some 45 persons at the General Conference when it begins April 23—a continuing tradition of ministry we have been doing since 1980. We have been working diligently with the 2008 Renewal and Reform Coalition to be prepared for a faithful and effective witness to biblical faith and Scriptural teachings.

Knowing the critical importance of the issues coming before General Conference (see article by Tom Lambrecht on p. 32), the Good News board at its January meeting took action affirming a National Call to Prayer for United Methodist Renewal. We are urging United Methodists to use the Lenten Season and on through General Conference to renew their commitment to personal prayer each morning, and to begin corporate noon-time prayer weekly, in fervent intercession for renewal and revival within the United Methodist Church.

Thank God, many of you have already been claiming God’s promises as you cry out with the Psalmist, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” (Psalm 85:6). But I have a hunch that many of us are not praying as regularly, fervently, or effectively as we might.

E. Stanley Jones, the late Methodist missionary to India, once said, “Where there is no effective prayer life, the heart of religion has ceased to beat and … becomes a dead body of forms and customs and dogmas.” Jones went on to say, “If I were to put my finger on the greatest lack in American Christianity, I would unhesitatingly point to the need for an effective prayer life among laity and ministers” (Jones, How to Pray). That remains our need today.

Those words of Jones, who faithfully observed his “morning watch” between 5 and 7 a.m. each day, were cited by friend and colleague Matt Friedeman, professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He went on to lament that “the vast majority of lay and clergy alike don’t practice a consistent and daily habit of prayer.” One of his recommendations was that pastors set an example by spending at least an hour a day in personal prayer.

In 1998, some 40 denominational leaders involved with Mission America, ministry leaders Billy Graham, John Perkins, Paul Cedar, Bill Bright, Jesse Miranda, and Ron Sider and more than 100 others joined to sign a “Nationwide Call to Prayer to the Church in America.” The Call was published as a full-page ad in USA Today.

Part of The Call declared: “We strongly urge all churches and all Christians of America to unite in seeking the face of God through prayer and fasting, persistently asking our Father to send revival to the church and spiritual awakening to our nation, so that Christ’s Great Commission might be fulfilled worldwide in our generation.” These leaders understood our great need.

As follow-up to The Call, the Mission America Coalition published a small but powerful booklet on corporate revival, An Urgent Appeal. (You can get the text free at www.urgentappeal.net, but I suggest you to buy copies from Navpress for only $6 for both personal and group study in your church.) This is the best, most Scriptural resource I’ve ever seen about praying for revival in our churches and nation.

“The revived Church, by many or by few, is moved to engage in evangelism, in teaching, and in social action,” wrote Dr. J. Edwin Orr, who researched spiritual awakenings for decades. This renewing has divine origin, that “times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord” (Acts 3:19). And it usually comes in response to repentance and prayer.

Amazing things happen when God’s people begin to pray earnestly. The noon prayer meeting movement, begun by Jeremiah Lanphier in New York City in 1857, started out with just six people. Within a few months, there were 20 meetings across the city, with the movement spreading to Chicago and other cities in America, and on to the British Isles and around the world. Estimates are that up to one million persons were converted in America and another million in Great Britain and Ireland. It began with six persons praying at noontime in one city. It can happen again.

Lord, will you not revive us again, as you have done so many times before when the church is at such low tide?  Do it again, Lord. And begin with me.



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