Long Beach Movement Planting #1

We (My family, 32 students and 9 staff) spent this summer in Long Beach, trying to launch spiritual movements among different cultures and people groups. As a Campus minister I know a lot about leading, training and equipping Chirstians for a lifetime of ministry, but this summer I experienced firsthand working only with non-believers. We wanted to see God raise up spiritual movements, not from an experienced Christian worker, but from lost and broken people. My next few blogs are about this process and some of the things I learned.

Practice of Prayer
Our first step was the Practice of prayer. In the way that we organized the summer prayer was the supreme priority. I know that it seems simplistic, but often we as a group would have a tough time filling 30-90 minutes of prayer, especially prayer that focused on those who did not know Christ. We asked our staff and students to pray daily for large amounts of time even before they had a place to minister in, or a group of people that they would be a part of. This practice led me to one of the first things that I learned this summer:

I am not as spiritual as I think I am. In other words, my heart does not beat in concert with Christ's in regards to the lost, or seeing his kingdom established, or in many other things that he values. It is convicting to see your own heart far away from the heart of Jesus.

The good news is that, though I am not as spiritual as I think I am God already knows this and does not hold it against me. It was a growing experience to confess my hard heart towards prayer and the things of the Lord and to see him changing me. By the end of the summer I found myself praying spontaneously for things that I never thought of before. Often Zach (my ministry partner for the summer) would spend 30-40 minutes praying without running out of things to pray about.

The practice of prayer changed the way that we did ministry. Often times we would leave an hour before we were scheduled to meet at our ministry location so that we would pray, and trust the Lord with all that we were going to do. This gave both Zach and I a deep sense of joy and freedom.

And i need to experience the joy and freedom of God. More often than not I am frustrated that I don't see more fruit than I do, and I work hard to produce it. But in these times of prayer we entrusted the results to God. In trusting God we were freed up in our relationships with our non-believing friends because through prayer and repentence we saw that we needed Jesus as much as they do. So by the time we met with them we were freed up to be ourselves and engage others as friends, not ministry priojects. Knowing full well that Jesus loves them as much as he loves us. I can't begin to describe to you the lifechange that this broguht to me as I prayed for others.

This picture contains some of the people that we met. Please join with me in continuing to pray for (Left to right) Martin, Zach, Joel, Howie, Me, Lester, and Ted.