It Has Started … One Million Hours of Prayer
“If we are going to successfully ‘go into all the world,’ we must do it on our knees,” declared Church of God World Missions Director Tim Hill, as he announced the vital aspect of prayer as part of the FINISH initiative that is currently guiding missions efforts: Find, Intercede, Nurture, Invest, Send, and Harvest.
The call to intercession for the unreached peoples of the world and for the global harvest sets a lofty goal of one million hours of prayer. “We can go more effectively in obedience to Christ’s challenge if the way before us is paved by intercessory prayer,” Hill said.
Doug Small of Project Pray, the prayer initiative of the Church of God, is working with Hill and the missions team to recruit intercessors and provide them information for their praying. Hill and Small have called upon local churches throughout the denomination to dedicate five minutes of prayer for the harvest on the first Sunday each month. “If a million members of our church pray for five minutes one Sunday a month, that’s a million hours of prayer during a year,” Small observed. This is an infinitely reachable goal.
Numerous resources are available free via the Internet for those who visit www.praycog.org/million-hour-prayer-campaign, including prayer guides, bulletins, videos, and information about specific unreached peoples targeted by the Church of God for outreach, evangelism, and church planting.
“God seems to place into the hearts of His people an urge to be involved in World Missions,” Hill said. “However, many do not feel called to go to another country, and many others, who have limited means, cannot give all they wish to give. But all of us can pray, and prayer is equally as important as the going and giving. We must never minimize how vital it is.”
Praying people are invited to add one minute of prayer to their daily intercessory practice, the prayer team stated. If only 17 of every 100 church members were to make this “Miracle Minute” commitment, they would log another million hours.
–Bill George
