L.A. Pastors Discuss Summit’s 'Fire'

Several Christian Reformed Church (CRC) pastors met for lunch at a restaurant in Los Angeles late last week to share their reactions to the first-ever CRC Prayer Summit that ended the previous day at All Nations Church in Lakeview Terrace, Calif.

The pastors are members of Classis Greater Los Angeles that encompasses CRC churches in and around that sprawling city, including All Nations Church in Lakeview Terrace, where the Prayer Summit took place.

Representing ethnic groups spanning from North America to American Samoa and from China and Korea to Egypt, the pastors took turns talking about the Summit as they ate.

Several of the pastors said that they attended the Summit unsure of what it would offer and what they would get out of it.

Although a few came away with questions and concerns about the Summit, all of  them said they were pleasantly surprised and challenged by the experience.
 
One of the pastors said that he was especially moved when everyone sang “Great is Thy Faithfulness” during the Tuesday evening session.

Prayer Summit organizers say more than 900 people packed the  sanctuary of All Nations Church for that service.

“It made me feel like I was part of one body singing  in one voice to God,” the pastor said.

“I left feeling that I was part of an important movement of prayer and that this will go somewhere.”

As one of the pastors took notes on their lunch-time discussion, another pastor said: “It was wonderful for so many people from so many different parts of the world to be together like that. I felt like, as a denomination, we were moving to a new level.”

Yet another pastor said: “I felt the spirit moving and unifying us from the first day . . . The whole Summit moved smoothly and flowed into what was happening next.”

The pastor said he especially enjoyed learning about various types of prayer.

These included Tong Sung prayer, which is praying out loud in many voices for one purpose. Prayer Summit organizers offered Tong Sung prayer at dawn on the last two days of the event.

Also discussed was Gethsemane prayer, which is prayer imitating the prayers of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before he died. Meditation, ancient disciplines of daily prayer and types of individual and corporate prayer were topics as well.

One pastor said he appreciated the Summit, but that he wished there had been more time set aside for silence and individual prayer.

Yet another said the prayers were very uplifting, but that he wished they could have prayed “more prayers of lament” from the Psalms.

Another pastor said that he wished the Summit had focused more on prayers asking God to intervene in the face of evil in the world.

“Prayer is about spiritual warfare,” he said. “We offered  many good prayers, but how do we resist the evil power and darkness inside and outside the church?”

Concerns aside, the pastors discussed how they could keep the spirit and the “fire” of the Prayer Summit alive in their churches.

They discussed giving more sermons on prayer, on appointing someone on a classis level who could speak to churches and groups and to lead them in prayer, and about launching prayer programs in which many churches could participate.

But they also said that the Prayer Summit taught them one thing especially — the power and need to pray, asking for God’s guidance, before beginning any initiative or program.

“I realize that we always need to be finding ways to get into the presence of God and of waiting on him to answer our prayers before we undertake efforts such as these,” said one of the pastors.