During my recent trip to teach at the Wesleyan Seminary of Venezuela, I received a short notice invitation to teach a workshop with small group leaders of a local United Methodist Church.
Their pastors were students in my class.
After the 2nd day, they invited me to come to their leaders retreat to spend time imparting vision and passion to their small group leaders.
About 50 people had gathered in a house that had been modified for their meetings.
50 Small Group Leaders
I’m guessing at the number of people that fit in that small little room on a not too cool Saturday morning. (About half the room is pictured here). More were outside on the patio.
They were gathered for their planned retreat, when the opportunity was given me to speak to them.
I shared a similar message I had shared the Wednesday before at a different church, focused on the heart of God for the lost, but calling the church to develop that same passion.
One challenge for the evangelical church in Latin America is a tendency to judge people as sinners and try to remain separate from them. This leads to the same attitude the pharisees had in Jesus day: “Why does your teacher eat with sinners?”
Instead, I believe and teach God wants us to be seekers instead of judges (busacdor en vez de juzgador):
to seek those who don’t know Him rather than judge them for them sin.
The work of prayer
Teaching is one thing. The work of prayer is another.
At the end of the teaching, we moved into a time of intercessory prayer, confessing sins of
- having a hard heart against reaching people for Christ.
- loosing our passion to reach the lost.
- judging rather than seeking.
The church lingered in prayer, doing the hard work of evangelistic prayer, followed by a time of intercession for people they know personally.
We wrote down names on sticky notes, put those names in a basket as a symbolic offering of our labor in prayer.
But that sense of God’s working wouldn’t let up – the prayer continued and continued. . .
We felt as if God was sharing His heart with us, melting our insensitive hearts, and causing some to weep over the lost.
Perhaps this is what Jesus felt on the mountainside (Matthew 9:38ff) when he “felt compassion.”
I believe that church will experience a harvest in coming months because of this work. I hope the pastor’s will send me some results a few months from now.
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