30MPC Christian School Model

The Opportunity

Prayer at the Heart (PATH) is an interdenominational and national prayer movement that 38 states have embraced, calling thousands of Christians to advance the Gospel and intercede for our nation.

PATH leadership has issued a 30-minute challenge to all followers of Jesus to pray with other Christians once a week in different social settings (i.e. neighborhood, work environment, workout facility, home, etc.) 

All over our country, people are getting outside the walls of their churches and connecting with other believers in their communities. One venue that is ideally suited to have people pray together on a regular basis is the Christian school.

The Strategy

Christian School leaders want to see young people grow in their faith at school. The sheer number of hours in the classroom each week allow for a school to accommodate biblical training by making group prayer a part of the school’s spiritual emphasis. Children are drawn to God quite naturally and prayer is a foundational step in spiritual growth. Characteristically, the scope of prayer in young people is often limited to personal concerns. Students pray for their parents, grandparents, pets, victory in sporting events and other issues close to home. However, if properly guided, children and teens are able to pray deeper and wider to tackle bigger issues and concerns.

The Our Father / Lord’s Prayer is a good prayer to focus on as well. It emphasizes three primary items:

  • Adoration (“Hallowed be Thy Name)
  • God’s Kingdom (Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…”)
  • Personal (“Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our sins”)

School day schedules are tight and finding minutes to break away to pray is a challenge. Adapting chapel services to allow for a time of prayer is perhaps the easiest way to launch the prayer challenge. Other opportunities might be during Bible class, lunch, study halls, or after school.

Grouping students together for prayer can happen in several ways. The easiest way is to pray in class where the students are already grouped together. An alternative method for K-12 schools is to place students in mixed aged prayer teams of around seven people. For example, a team might consist of one teacher, two high school students, two middle schoolers and two elementary kids. A teacher/adult would be present to initially manage the group but not dominate the time of prayer. The oldest student(s) would lead by example and exercise influence and engagement with the hope that the teacher/adult would slowly withdraw and student leadership would result. In the frame work of the Lord’s Prayer, each prayer team would be given three or more specific topics to pray for, to help get the prayer challenge off the ground. For example:

  • Praying for the lost to come to know Christ.
  • Praying for the light of God’s love to dispel the darkness across the land.
  • Praying for Christians around the world who are suffering persecution.

As the team becomes more comfortable with each other and they grow in their prayer capacity, the topics handed down may not be necessary – the students may come up with their own. Team rosters could change every quarter to keep things fresh.

School parents could be invited and encouraged to pray with others as well. An entire school community could accept the challenge of increasing the level of prayer at their school and witness the hand of God moving amongst them.

Getting started

The 30 Minute Prayer Challenge in a school requires three components:

  • An adjustment in the schedule to allow for regularly scheduled prayer. (if 30 minutes is too long for young students, begin with a shorter duration)
  • A champion to lead the way. This could be a school administrator, teacher, chaplain, or parent endorsed by school leadership and tasked with organizing the prayer teams.
  • A team of older students (High School or Middle School) that are committed to lead their classmates in regular times of prayer.

The Impact

The zeal of youth, when properly guided, is a force that accelerates quickly. This prayer challenge could catch fire and become a blaze of young believers in Christian schools, public schools and homeschool groups. A new generation of Christians is arising and training in prayer is a key step toward the next great awakening.

Questions and/or Comments to: rwillis@christiancommunityschool.org

“Whenever God determines to do a great work, He first sets His people to pray” (C. Spurgeon). This reliable principle begs the question: “How does God mobilize his people to heartfelt prayer?” Most importantly, how does God move Christian leaders who shepherd His church to unite in fervent, persistent, biblically focused prayer for the fulfillment of His purposes? By two things mainly: 1) distress over the degradation of the church and the surrounding culture and 2) hope that God will pour out His Spirit on his church and fill it with His fulness until it overflows with transformative impact on society. Many believers are distressed at the current state of things. At the same time, there is much reason to hope for God’s divine intervention in response to passionate, biblically guided prayer.

Believers across America now mourn the debility of the church; its vitality is faltering, its impact fading, its mission neglected, and its devotion to God being undercut by love for this world. Right now we are enduring the largest and fastest religious shift in American history. Its scope is greater than every previous spiritual awakening in our history combined, only in the opposite direction. Christians are being confronted by “spiritual forces of evil” (Eph. 6:12) operating from the heavenly realms that boldly infiltrate every aspect of society, even the church. These dark powers aim to 1) frustrate God’s purpose to bless all peoples on earth through Christ with countless benefits, including righteousness, peace, joy, and justice, and 2)
inflict endless varieties of misery on everyone. When spiritual decline and cultural decay prevail, God’s people rise up to seek the Lord in prayer as the fountain of every blessing, asking him to fill the earth with his glory, pour out His Holy Spirit, inspire his church, and deliver people and cultures from innumerable troubles. Now is the time to pray with desperation for spiritual and cultural renewal, for divine intervention, for the fulfillment of God’s purposes for his church and his creation in Northeast Ohio.

Christian leaders, especially pastors, have a heightened responsibility to press into God with prayer for the church. Biblical precedent shows that gathering church leaders together to engage in heartfelt prayer for the welfare of their community often initiates widespread spiritual and social renewal both in church and society (2 Chron. 7:13-14; 15:8-10; 34:29-32). New Testament accounts show that when Christian leaders unite in prayer, often in response to social and/or spiritual crises, spiritual awakening and gospel advance follow (Acts 1:13-14; 2:1-4; 4:23-31; 13:1-3).

Jesus himself instills expectation of an outpouring of God’s Spirit in response to prayer with this promise: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Our Father in heaven is especially ready to pour out upon us the blessing we most need and long for, the very Spirit of God who imparts divine life, wisdom, and virtue.

With all this in mind, now is the time for Christian leaders across Northeast Ohio to come together to seek the Lord with biblically grounded, Christ-directed, wholehearted prayer for a God-given spiritual awakening. The trumpet of God is blaring! He is calling us to pray! Join Christian leaders from across our region to humble ourselves, seek the Lord’s face, and be willing to respond through His intervening grace to any changes He calls us to make! (Psalm 110:3)

The Gathering is an extension of the nationwide PATH (Prayer at the Heart) initiative piloted recently in Northeast Ohio. Put The Gathering on your calendar: Sunday, September 24, 6 pm, Calvary Chapel of Cleveland, 709 Brook Park Road, Brooklyn Heights, OH.