The hearts of Alabama Baptists bowed in spiritual renewal and raised resolved to proliferate prayer throughout Baptist churches in the state during a North American Mission Board (NAMB)-sponsored prayer conference.
Held in the chapel of Cottage Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) in Mobile Jan. 10–11 as part of the board’s Great Commission Prayer Ministry, and co-sponsored by the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM) and CHBC, the event’s theme was “Opening New Doors Through Prayer.”
The chapel doors opened to set the physical stage for statewide spiritual change in the hearts of Baptists and churches throughout Alabama, but the real staging area for change lay in the hearts of the men and women gathered in the building.
“It’s been a humbling experience to come and to understand who God is and who we are not,” said Lawrence Phipps, pastor of Vaughn Forest Baptist Church in Montgomery. Their church prayer team came to the event.
“This was the first of its kind in Alabama,” said Max Croft, director of discipleship and family ministries with SBOM. “There are prayer conferences held, but this is the first one in Alabama that is under the auspices of the NAMB and is the Great Commission Prayer Conference (GCPC),” Croft said. “We will be co-sponsoring two of these per year in Alabama.”
The NAMB has held GCPCs in several states already. The next in Alabama is scheduled for September at First Baptist Church, Jasper, and another is set for Birmingham in 2004, according to Croft.
“We are here for the first one just because Cottage Hill had the vision and desire to have one. It’s not central in the state, so we knew it would be difficult for a lot of people to come, but everywhere that people have heard about it, we have had responses saying that this is right and what we need to do,” he said.
The growth of this desire came from Bill Sears, minister of education at CHBC and others locally who helped bring the conference to Mobile.
“Over a year ago we were planning, praying and seeking. One of the things we wanted to do was some kind of a prayer seminar or conference that would be not just for our (CHBC) people, but for whoever wanted to come,” Sears said.
Widely supported, the Mobile conference drew Baptists from many points in Alabama, along with many people from the Mobile area. Others attending were from Huntsville, Montgomery, Brewton and Opelika.
“It was a conference to emphasize the importance of corporate and personal prayer,” Croft said. “This conference was aimed primarily at calling churches to be houses of prayer and to give instruction and inspiration.”
The conference began about 6:30 p.m. Jan. 10 with singing and praise led by One Heart, a trio of singing ladies from CHBC and congregational praise singing led by Ed Keyes, CHBC associate pastor in music.
After introductions, Robert Smith Jr., professor of Christian preaching at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School, delivered the message.
Chris Schofield, manager, prayer evangelism unit, NAMB, and Thomas Wright, prayer associate, NAMB, prayed and made instructional and inspirational comments at various times to the estimated 300-plus gathered for the conference. An early Saturday morning corporate prayer time led by NAMB personnel included people praying for the lost by name, voicing words and phrases that captured the attributes of God. They joined hands in small groups for voiced prayers. The half hour or so time concluded with the singing of a popular chorus, “Lord I Lift Your Name on High.” People then filed out to the various seminars in a nearby building.
Doug Shelburne from First Baptist of Brewton said the conference offered a lot of things to absorb, such as the church “being more sensitive to one another’s needs and just being more responsive to hurting people.” These were two of many renewed emphases he gained from the Friday night session.
“As prayer goes, so goes the church,” he said. “We just want our church to become burdened to pray,” he said.
The conference ended with corporate worship, led by John Avant, pastor of New Hope Baptist Church, Fayetteville, Ga.
Several people knelt at the chapel’s altar while others expressed prayers from their pews.
Pray for, don’t curse enemies
Eleven “equipping seminars” put water to the proverbial prayer wheel for those attending the Great Commission Prayer Conference by leading them in biblically based instruction and ideas.
Dedicated prayer warriors for Christ through their various ministries led attendees to find ways to fall on their knees figuratively and sometimes literally.
Seminars focused on one or more aspects of the North American Mission Board’s Great Commission Prayer Ministry themes — personal, corporate and Kingdom prayer.
A session of the Personal Prayer Life seminar brought unexpected opportunity for its participants to put prayer into action.
Leader Tom Kyzer with Prayer Awakening Ministries asked anyone who needed prayer to see him. One woman attending asked for prayer for a tumor. About 25 people who had been attending the seminar huddled around the woman and one of them led in prayer for her.
A seminar on prayer and missions led by Paul Washer, director of Heartcry Mission Society, drove home the point that “in missions, everybody’s game.”
Washer challenged Baptists to pray boldly for those they’d probably rather do anything to other than pray for — people like the spiritually lost in the limelight, terrorists, serial killers and evil dictators.
Prayer important to strong church
Personal Prayer Life seminar leader Tom Kyzer asked attendees, “If God withdrew Himself right now, would it make any difference in what happens in your church tomorrow?”
Kyzer, a North American Mission Board volunteer prayer consultant and head of Prayer Awakening Ministries, said, “I think we have become so used to not seeing the presence of God and we’ve tried to simulate it in all ways, that we don’t even realize it may not be there.”
He added that personal prayer among believers, long before they come together with others, strengthens corporate prayer and evokes the presence of God.
Prayer should be an essential component of everything, rather than another “activity.”
“Many of our churches are prayer activity churches. We’ve got all these things going on out there and when we get a chance, we’ll pray,” he said. “This is a good step but you’ve got to move beyond that to become a house of prayer … where prayers are a part of all your ministry.”
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