Videos, Prayer Labs to be Featured at Prayer Summit 2015

Video interviews with church leaders speaking about the persecution of Christians in Egypt will be featured as part of the Christian Reformed Church’s Prayer Summit 2015, which opens on April 13 at All Nations CRC in Lakeview Terrace, Calif.

Charles Kim, a videographer and coordinator of the summit, says he recently traveled to Egypt to capture the footage.

“It was incredible for me to meet with leaders of the Protestant church in that country and to see the amazing things that God is doing,” said Kim.

A spirit is at work there and change is happening, said Kim, even in the face of the martyrdom several weeks ago of more than 20 Coptic Christians from Egypt by the terrorist group ISIS.

“The people spoke to me about the resilience of their faith — and of what an important part prayer plays in that,” said Kim.

Kim has also put together other videos — one on a prayer revival that took place in New York City in the mid 19th Century and another relating to the need to use prayer to bring about racial reconciliation in the inner cities of the U.S. — that will be shown as part of the summit.

“My hope is that these videos will grab the interest of people and serve as appetizers for churches who may want to use them as part of their own prayer ministries after the summit,” said Kim.

Besides the videos, the summit will offer a range of speakers, breakout sessions, times of prayer, and what are being called Prayer Labs.

“These labs will allow people to gather together and to intentionally pray for extended periods of time over different topics,” said Kim.

Topics include Praying over the Middle East; Praying Over the Church; Praying Over the Next Generation; Praying for Women’s Concerns, and Praying for Healing.

Other Prayer Lab topics include Praying through Scripture; Praying Over Racial Tensions, and Praying for North Korea.

Issues to be addressed during the general and breakout sessions include using the biblical psalms in worship and prayer; using prayer in today’s digital world; listening prayer, and why and how to pray for your neighbors.

The summit opens at 2 p.m. on Monday, April 13 and runs until noon on Wednesday, April 15.

About 180 people from all over North America are registered to attend and at least that many members of Los Angeles-area CRC congregations will be on hand for worship on Monday and Tuesday evenings, said Kim.

This is the third CRC Prayer Summit. The first was in 2012, followed by another in 2013. The national summits have inspired more than a dozen regional prayer summits.

The national summit, says Kim, has helped to foster a powerful and ongoing spirit of prayer in the CRC.

“The summit is a time when church leaders and lay people can come together in a humble posture before God,” he said. “It is a time to pray for all grace and good things in our lives and to seek God’s intervention in all that is happening.”