Behind the Scenes
God Uses Prayer Partners to Transform a Pastor's Ministry.
 
by John C. Maxwell  Issue #5 March/April 1998 

 

Photograph by Mike Saunier
It all began for me in 1981 when I became the senior pastor at Skyline Wesleyan Church in San Diego. I had been a pastor for 11 years and had just finished serving two years at Wesleyan World Headquarters. I was eager to get started at my new church.

During those first critical weeks, I spent the majority of my time meeting the church's leaders and assessing their gifts and abilities. One Tuesday morning when I'd been there for about six weeks, I was reviewing the day's schedule when I saw an appointment with someone named Bill Klassen.

"Who's Bill Klassen?" I asked my assistant, Barbara.

"Your 10 o'clock appointment," she replied.

"I see that, but who is he? Is he in leadership?"

"No," said Barbara sheepishly. "As a matter of fact, he doesn't even come to church here." She added quickly, "But he said he had to see you. He was very persistent."

"Well," I said, "give me 15 minutes with him, and then if we're not done, interrupt us." My plan was to find out what he needed, help him—kindly but quickly—and get on with my work.

Bill turned out to be a man of about 60 with snow-white hair. He told me a little about himself and then said, "John, I believe God has called me—a layman—to disciple, encourage, and pray for pastors. The reason I came here today was so I could pray for you."

I was dumbfounded. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I had spent 13 years in ministry, and no lay person had ever told me he or she made it a point to pray for me. I had always thought it was my job to do the praying.

Prayer Partnerships throughout History

Prayer partnerships between spiritual leaders and lay-people aren't new. In Exodus chapter 17, Aaron and Hur partnered with Moses in prayer. As Joshua fought against the Amalekites, Moses raised his hands, appealing for God's favor. When Moses grew tired, as spiritual leaders do, Aaron and Hur held up his hands—and Joshua and the children of Israel were able to win the battle.

Prayer partnerships are evident in the New Testament as well. In the book of Acts, 120 disciples prayed together in the days preceding Pentecost, preparing the way for the message of a new spiritual leader named Peter. When he preached, 3,000 people were converted.

No doubt innumerable men and women have partnered in prayer with their leaders, though records of most of them don't exist outside heaven. But we do know some remarkable stories about partnerships from the last century or two. For example, in 1830, Charles Finney saw more than 1,000 of the 10,000 inhabitants of Rochester, New York, come to Christ in one year. The secret, he said, was the prayers of a man named Abel Clary. Finney wrote, "Mr. Clary continued as long as I did and did not leave until I had left. He never appeared in public, but gave himself wholly to prayer."

In another instance, a bedridden girl named Marianne Adlard read about an obscure YMCA worker named D. L. Moody and prayed that God would bring him to her church in London. Moody came, and during 10 days in 1872, 400 new converts came into the church where he preached.

In 1909, a Canadian missionary named Jonathan Goforth witnessed a great revival while working in Manchuria, China. Later that year in London, Goforth met an invalid lady. When he told her about the revival, she showed him a notebook. She had recorded three days when she sensed a special power in her prayer for his work in Manchuria. Goforth recognized that those were the days he had seen the greatest power in his meetings.

In 1934, a southern revivalist named Mordeccai Ham preached in Charlotte, North Carolina. Many people came to Christ during those meetings, including a young man named Billy Graham. What Ham may not have known was that several laymen, including Billy Graham's father, had spent a day prior to the revival praying that God would touch their city, their state, and their world.

There is no telling how much the world has been changed as a result of the prayers of Christians behind the scenes. C. H. Spurgeon said, "Whenever God determines to do a great work, He first sets His people to pray." Spurgeon had experienced a moment of revelation in which he discovered that neither his sermons nor his good works accounted for the spiritual impact of his ministry. It was instead, as one writer put it, "the prayers of an illiterate lay brother who sat on the pulpit steps pleading for the success of the sermons."

Laypeople Called to Pray

Beginning the day Bill Klassen came into my office to pray for me, incredible things began happening in the church. Bill became my prayer and accountability partner, and he helped me put together the most important ministry in the church: my prayer partners. We started with 31 people. Eventually that number grew to 120.

Every Sunday, a group of prayer partners met with me before worship services. They walked through the church praying for the service and the people who would be attending. Prayer partners would settle into a pew where a friend normally sat, praying that he or she would accept Christ that day or receive a special healing from God during the service. They prayed at the altar where people might later come forward, near where the worship team would be stationed during the service, and over the pulpit from which I would preach.

Then we'd adjourn to my study, where we would share personal prayer requests and I would tell them my hopes for what God would do during the service. Next they would lay hands on me in preparation for preaching and worship. During the service, they met in a place we called "the upper room" to pray continuously.

For 14 years, I never entered a worship service without the prayer covering of those partners. During the week, they interceded for me daily. One person kept me in his or her prayers throughout an entire day each month.

During those 14 years, God transformed our church through the power of those people's prayers, while the congregation tripled in size, giving quadrupled, and lay involvement increased from 112 to more than 1,800 people.

But the really awesome power of those prayers was seen in individual lives. Thousands of people received Christ and were baptized during those years. My prayer partners grew in their walks with God and became active participants in the miraculous power of prayer in their daily lives. And during those years, God led me down an incredible road of spirit-ual and professional growth.

Without prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit, I believe none of these things would have happened. The glory and honor belong to God. But the credit for releasing that power and keeping me protected day after day belongs to those prayer partners.

All It Takes is One Person.

John Wesley once said, "God does nothing but in answer to prayer." I believe God would not have blessed our church and my ministry the way He did had it not been for the commitment of Bill Klassen, a layman dedicated to prayer, who continues to pray for me today.

Revival starts with one person who has a heart for the church and its leaders. Are you the one? You can be. You don't need to be specifically gifted—you only need to be a Christian. If you meet that qualification, you have the potential to become a powerful prayer partner with your leaders. As God changes you—and them—the fire of revival can spread throughout your church. And who can stand against a church on fire for God?

 

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About the author:
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John Maxwell has been a pastor for 30 years. Read more about establishing a pastor's prayer partner ministry in John's book, Partners in Prayer (Thomas Nelson). To order, call 1-888-993-7847.