Centered In Prayer

“Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergy or lay; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.” — John Wesley

On behalf of the SGA GMC Prayer Team and with the encouragement of President Pro Tempore Jay Hanson, we invite you to join us in the growing and enhancing the intentional prayer life of all SGA churches and also in all of our NGA district churches.

We your 10 member SGA Prayer Team have been meeting weekly by Zoom, and it has been a sacred time of intercession and blessing which we all look forward to each Monday morning at 8:30 – 9:30 am. We begin our prayer meetings with a review of prayer needs followed by at least 30 minutes of corporate prayer. A member of the group follows up with an email giving each of us a weekly prayer focus list. We enthusiastically recommend this practice and are praying that this discipline will spread throughout our conference by establishing District Prayer Teams as described below!

First, we ask that each church appoint a Prayer Chair for your congregation ASAP and send the name with contact information to your Connectional Community Elder. The CCE will organize a prayer team for each connectional community which can meet on a regular basis for group prayer (zoom or in-person). We anticipate these meetings will be blessed by the presence of the Holy Spirit and become a sacred time of Christian fellowship leading to shared ideas and a greater sense of connection within the Body of Christ. We believe it is important that these district prayer teams include both clergy and laity.

Consider asking your Prayer Chair to establish a weekly prayer meeting at your local church open to all. We have done this at my home church, Pine Forest in Dublin on Tuesdays at noon and we also invite members of our church to pray with our pastor and our staff on Sunday mornings prior to the services.

We encourage your local church Prayer Chair to be creative in providing other new opportunities to pray, perhaps creating a dedicated prayer room in your church. If the SGA GMC Prayer Team can be of assistance to your connectional community prayer groups or local church, please reach out to us. Additional prayer opportunities include prayer vigils targeting specific needs or prayer services, for example, a watch night service.

Last, when my home church, Pine Forest, was in travailing prayer for our senior pastor, Wes Moye (a COVID patient who spent 40 days on a ventilator support and 100 days in the hospital), our church-wide prayer life grew exponentially. We prayed at the church three times a day and when Emory Hospital called his wife, Jan to tell her he was dying, we sent out a request on social media for prayer. We received 40,000+ responses from all over the world! We witnessed Wes’ recovery begin that day and are convinced this was a miraculous answer to prayer.

As we, the GMC launch a new expression of Methodism, it is vitally important to grow as a praying church as was experienced at the time of Wesley and Whitefield. If we want to lift high the name of Jesus and draw others to Him beyond the pews of our churches, we must bathe our efforts in travailing prayer that has preceded all previous Great Awakenings. Let us hear the call and pray with confidence remembering, "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:16b