[TruthTalk] Emailing: story4.htm

[Lance Muir]

Title: Canadian prayer warriors in search of “holy desperation”

Canadian prayer warriors in search of "holy desperation" Transformations II: The Glory Spreads premieres around the globe KELLY HENSCHEL CW Staff Canada isn't desperate enough to spur community-transforming revival—at least not yet. “We don’t have a sense that we’re in an impossible situation. We don’t have a sense that we need God to transform our communities,” says Bruce Edwards, senior pastor at First Alliance church in Scarborough, Ontario. Edwards, and people from more than a dozen other churches in his area of the city, gather periodically to pray for their neighbourhoods, a joint venture they simply call “Community Transformation Through Prayer.” It’s a small initiative, one that was spurred by the first of a pair of videos highlighting communities around the world where radical prayer has brought radical change. The Sentinel Group produced Transformations in 1999 as an intercessory prayer tool, showcasing four cities in Guatemala, Colombia, Kenya and California where positive changes took place in every level of society as Christians prayed. There are now more than 200,000 copies of the videos in circulation, with an estimated viewing audience of 50 million. Sentinel’s second video, Transformations II: The Glory Spreads, was released this spring and will be shown in more than 75 cities around the globe. The video highlights communities in the Hebrides of Scotland, the Eastern Arctic and the African nation of Uganda, tracing God’s presence through history and the more recent results of fervent, unified prayer. For example, in the Eastern Arctic, which includes sections of northern Quebec, severe abuse, drinking and drugs are common. Desperate, Christ-ians in various northern communities started to pray. Several years later, abuse and addiction rates are down, families are healing and even the Arctic’s political arena has been infused with Christian principles. “Having a heart open to God was all it took,” said one northern pastor. Old concepts made new Transformation and revival is nothing new, says Alistair Petrie, director of Sentinel’s Canadian operations. Canada itself could be perched at the edge of a great transformation. Petrie applauds the growing number of prayer initiatives like Vancouver’s “Consultation on Transformation” last November, the Canadian Prayer Assembly and the Canadian Prayer Centre. “There are real efforts at the heart of some cities to reach out and ask for the Lord’s visitation upon them,” he says. “These are the days where God is preparing this nation for an immense move of God,” he adds. But, he says, “We haven’t yet quite got all of the necessary pre-requisites in order. “Spiritually, we’re anemic in comparison to many of the moves in Third World settings, partly because our worldview is very different. We don’t really understand the true cause and effect of spiritual issues around us. Behind the physical issue is the spiritual issue taking place. “There is the desire and the hunger in the heart of the Canadian church to want what God wants, but there’s a fear of the cost,” he adds. Doubting the possibilities Canadian Christians need to get to a place of “holy desperation,” says Petrie, “where you go beyond your comfort zone, and you learn to see the city from God’s perspective.” North Americans don’t measure up with the same kind of intensity or perseverance when it comes to passionate prayer necessary for transforming change, says Richard Long, coordinator of the Together Network in Ontario. Part of the reason, Long says, is that North Americans embody the proverbial Doubting Thomas. “In the West we haven’t seen it, so we don’t believe it can happen,” he says. However, he adds, initiatives like Transformations expose people to the “possibilities as to what could happen if they work together.” “My sense is that North American society, and the North American church is profoundly more spiritually impoverished than we realize,” says Mike Lafleur, director of Transformation Prayer Ministries in Mississauga, Ontario. “This widening gap cannot be addressed by better programs or even great, dynamic local church activity. It will take a new paradigm, a new desperation that will seize the body of Christ and draw us together in prayer to cry out to God and receive a collective vision for our communities.” There are three critical elements to galvanizing the Canadian church to the kind of prayer that results in change, says Bruce Edwards, “the unity among the leaders and the churches, the sense of desperation and the reality that it doesn’t happen overnight.”