Pastor Prays for Revival in CRC
Rev. Pildo Joung, founding pastor of a large church in Korea, closed the second day of the Christian Reformed Church’s first-ever Prayer Summit by praying for a great outpouring of revival and God’s grace to fall upon CRC congregations across North America.
“Lord God, bring a great revival in the CRC denomination. Lord Jesus, start this as a revival of prayer right now,” Joung prayed with a crowd of hundreds of people in the sanctuary of All Nations Church in Lakeview Terrace, Calif.
Joung is the founding pastor of Soooyoungro Presbyterian Church in Busan, Korea. His church, founded in 1975, is now one of the largest in Korea with more than 30,000 people worshiping there every week.
The Prayer Summit, which closes today, was the idea of Korean CRCs who invited the denomination to join them for three days of prayer and praise.
A Time to Watch and Pray
Several of the more than 400 people attending the Prayer Summit said that they have felt a powerful spirit of unity linking them as they have sung praise songs, joined hands in prayer, listened to speakers such as Joung, and attended small-group sessions and workshops.
Wanting CRC congregations across North America to have a chance to join in this spirit of unity, Prayer Summit organizers set aside Tuesday evening as a time to “Watch and Pray.”
They provided a video clip of activities from the opening day of the Summit, with the hope that CRC congregations would download and watch the video.
Then, after watching the video, churches were asked to encourage their members to pray about their own concerns as a way of showing unity with the Summit itself and its session on Tuesday evening.
Some 40 CRC congregations actually downloaded the video, and more than 300 individuals also accessed it.
While members of those congregations and individuals had the chance to watch the video from Monday, Rev. Joung spoke about revival and the power of prayer -- a topic that ran through many of the sessions and workshops on Tuesday.
Prayer Has Fueled Revivals
In a morning session, Wlliam Dyrness, a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary, said that prayer has been the prime mover behind all of the great Christian revivals over the centuries.
“God’s work and revival is almost always started by unexpected people who have had strong biblical teaching and deep inner lives of prayer,” he said.
But these prayer-fueled revivals also have taken on important practical expressions.
“It’s important to realize that these revivals have had a strong, cultural impact across cultures and have broken down racial and denominational barriers in order that God’s people could work together,” said Dyrness.
Discussing Types of Prayer
In breaks between sessions, pastors attending the Prayer Summit discussed what they have learned about different types of prayer and especially the prayer styles of Korean CRC congregations.
One type of Korean prayer was experienced at a 5:30 a.m. dawn prayer service at the church.
Called Tong Sung prayer, participants shouted out in unison their prayers and petitions to God. As they did this, a loud, deeply passionate noise arose and filled the sanctuary.
While some pastors said they were moved by the dawn prayer session, they wondered whether they could introduce this kind of prayer to their congregations.
One CRC pastor said it would be “a heavy lift,” given the highly emotional nature of this kind of prayer.
Another pastor said he would have a hard time bringing this type of prayer into his congregation. He said the Holy Spirit would have to intervene for it to happen.
Tong Sung Prayer’s Focus
In one of the Tuesday workshops, Rev. Dong Il Kim spoke about Tong Sung prayer. He uses it in his congregation in Los Angeles, but agrees that it might not catch on in a non-Korean congregation.
“I love the CRC, but whenever I’ve suggested that a church use this type of prayer I’ve found resistance,” said Kim, who is also a professor of church history at the International Reformed Theological Seminary, a distance-learning-based institution.
“I don’t see Tong Sung prayer as an issue of right or wrong. This is one of the many ways we can pray,” he said.
Many Christians, not only Koreans, have started to pray this way, he said. “We cry out to Jesus in Tong Sung prayer because we love him.”
Tong Sung prayer is very important to him as well, said Rev. Joung in a presentation he gave in an afternoon session prior to his talk in the evening.
Tong Sung prayer has been instrumental in his own prayer life as well as that of church members as his congregation has grown, and continues to grow, he said.
He said Tong Sung prayer is probably not going to be used by a majority of the churches in the CRC.
But whatever type of prayer is used, he said, he’d like to see people in every church in the CRC start to gather even more often to pray. "When people are praying together, the church will grow,” said Joung.
