Prayer Summit Opens

The opening session of the Christian Reformed Church Prayer Summit 2015 included songs, greetings, opportunities to take part in different types of prayer, and a range of messages.

For instance, an Episcopal priest spoke about praying the psalms, a pentecostal preacher talked of the Apostolic power of the Holy Spirit and prayer, and a former missionary discussed her work among Muslim terrorists in Nigeria.

In addition, there was a breakout session discussing the use of prayer among young people in today’s digital world.

As part of  the opening general session of the summit, which runs through Wednesday at noon, Colin Watson Sr., the CRC’s new director of ministries and administration, had a chance to introduce himself.

“I’m very pleased to give you greetings,” he said. “This is my first day as director of ministries and administration and I can’t think of a better way to start than to be here with you at a prayer summit.”

Rev. Moses Chung, director of Christian Reformed Home Missions, then spoke briefly to emphasize that the summit — the third held by the CRC — is not a symposium or conference on prayer.

Although it is for learning lessons about prayer, its main focus, he said, is for “us to seek God’s face, to encounter God. We will have a chance to pray deeply together, to form and focus our prayers before God.”

The event is being held at All Nations CRC north of Los Angeles.

Rev. Tom DeVries, general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, offered an opening message during the session.  His being there, along with others from the RCA, reflects how the CRC and his denomination are being drawn together in various activities by prayer, he said.

“We see how God is calling us to be one, one in faith, one in baptism … Prayer calls us to worship and believe and hope and learn and grow and glorify God together.”

Rev. John Goldingay, a professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary and an Episcopal priest, gave the first of several summit presentations. His topic was “What the Psalms Have to Teach Us.”

The psalms, he said, are God’s prayer book and offer people a design for prayer.

“The psalms teach us that we are to pray with God in mind, but we also speak to God and to one another,” said Goldingay.

An important part of praying the psalms, he said, is to speak praise. And in doing this, “I’m getting myself out of the picture. I focus on God.”

Another aspect of praying the psalms is petition and lamentation, telling God when we are overwhelmed about something, he said.

Sometimes, when we pray a psalm this way, we are specifically asking God to do something, hoping God will answer soon.

Often, though, we pray a certain psalm with this intention, aware that God may not answer soon or in the way that we want, said Goldingay.

When he finished, people had a chance to break up in groups and pray prayers of gratitude and adoration. Participants also were asked to get on their knees to pray or to bow prostrate on the floor to pray.

They were led by Rev. Darren Roorda, director of Canadian Ministries of the CRC.

“I hope we encounter in this posture the reality that prayer is a dynamic reality,” he said.

In praying, he said, “Lord, listen to your children pray. Send your spirit into this place.”

Breakout sessions will be scattered throughout the summit. These will focus on various topics. There also will be prayer labs in which people will gather to pray specially for such issues as trouble in the Middle East and racial problems in the inner cities of the U.S.

One of the breakout sessions on Monday afternoon was titled “Praying with Digital Natives.” It was presented by Rev. Bill Van Groningen, chaplain at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Ill., and Benjamin Hoekstra, student prayer coordinator at Trinity.

Van Groningen began the session by describing different approaches to prayer down through the centuries, mentioning, for example, how the Benedictine monks created a well-ordered prayer life in the midst of their violent 7th Century world.

He touched on other approaches as well, running up to the fairly well organized prayer before and after meals in the "Boomer" CRC home of his youth.

“These were responses to what people knew at the time, and all of these made sense, ” he said.

“But  today we live in a different digital culture in which we are seeing tectonic shifts. You don’t know what you will find in any church you visit.

“Nothing is predicable. Prayer is up in the air. How do you pray if you are a digital native?”

Hoekstra, a self-described digital native, tried to answer that question, which he acknowledged is difficult.

“We live in a world in which people can bring information to one another more quickly than ever before,” said Hoekstra.

“But is that helping when it comes to prayer? Is it bringing young people closer to God?”

In some ways, digital media drives young people apart. At the same time, they use this technology without thinking about what it might mean in their personal and spiritual lives, he said.

At Trinity, they have tried an experiment hoping it can bring prayer into the digital world of students and perhaps make them more aware of the ways in which such things as Facebook and Twitter can help or harm them.

“We are asking students to consider praying every time they use their digital device. Some people are excited about the idea; others aren’t,” said Hoekstra.

“But our calling as Christians is to engage in the world. Digital media is in the world. We believe the gospel is always relevant wherever you are.”

In the evening session, Amos Yong, a Pentecostal preacher and professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, focused on the Book of Acts.

He spoke of the ways in which prayer helped to shape and inspire and turn the disciples of Christ into his apostles, charging them with the zeal to spread the gospel to the world.

Yong also linked the message of the apostles experiences in prayer and their encounter with the Holy Spirit into the summit. He said the event can be a time in which the Spirit can visit the place and touch the people in it.

“God and his Spirit can take us to the next step for us to take and for the CRC to take as a denomination,” said Yong.

Ruth Veltkamp followed Yong and also spoke of the Holy Spirit and its power to transform lives, especially lives of Muslims with whom she worked in northern Nigeria for more than 40 years.

She recounted stories of how Muslim terrorists were healed by the forgiveness that comes through the Holy Spirit and prayer. She spoke also of how prayer heals sin.

She told the story of a young Muslim woman who came to believe in Christ and lived for a time in Veltkamp’s home.

“I had spoken to her of how the Lord does not want the sun to go down on our anger,” said Veltkamp.

“She would feel anger, especially at those who didn’t like that she had become a  Christian. We would pray together every night until she gave the sin of anger away.”