A Backward School of Church Planting

Prayer walking the streets of any city I inhabit has become a fixture of my ministry over the past 10 years. It has become the foundation of everything else I do and the crown jewel of my relationship with Jesus. I share my ministry city with him every day through the highest moments of triumph and the lowest moments of discouragement.

However, it was not always that way.

In many ways, I learned the craft of church planting backwards. My first city was both the most difficult one to survive and the most fruitful one in ministry. Some of our work is still bearing fruit years after we were forced to leave the city. All my time was taken with leader training and forming of groups. Only later did I learn that others had done the hard work of prayer that laid the foundation for what I was able to do. Back then, I struggled to abide in prayer at all.

It was not until I ministered in a beautiful and user-friendly city that has never once had an indigenous follower of Jesus in history that I learned to pray. Everything I had learned and done in ministry was stripped from me, and I was left with my emaciated prayer life as my central tool. I did not set out to learn to pray. I was driven to it by two things.

My 297 Moment

In the middle of my first year in my new city, I was frustrated with myself. How could I be in my sixteenth year of ministry and still not know how to pray? What was wrong with me? I was fed up with my inability to pray.

At the same time, I sat before Dr. Osama Ahmad keeping a promise to my wife to follow up on my concerningly high blood pressure. I had promised her that I would do whatever he advised me to do. His answer was annoyingly straight-forward: Start medicine and walk at least one hour every day.

It was with a grumbling heart that I walked those first few days. It all changed when two things happened.

First, I heard the Elevation Worship song, “All Things New,” as I walked by a wall near my home. Curious, I stood up on a bus stop bench to see the other side, which revealed a sprawling graveyard of generations of families from my city. I wept for the remaining 30 minutes of my walk earnestly praying for God to make things new in my city.

In the coming days, I prayed more songs over my city and lost track of the time. Then, God marked me deeply with the verse that has defined much of my ministry since.

“But seek the welfare (Shalom) of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare (Shalom) you will find your welfare (Shalom)” —Jer 29:7 (Hence the 297 reference.)

It impacted me to the core of my being! If I wanted to receive any peace at all from God, I had to pray for the peace of my city. The passion and quantity of my prayers for the peace of my city were the barometer of my desire to have peace from God. I had, in effect, communicated to God for years of ministry that I was disinterested in seeing a flow of peace into my own life because I cared nothing for cultivating a life of prayer for the city where I lived.

The 297 Movement

I had learned prayer walking as a strategic tool on my very first visits to South Asia. However, I never used it again because I had understood it to be a technical and special tool for certain urgent or complex breakthrough situations. Slowly, I came to realize that it was not for certain situations or times of urgency. It was for every situation and for every time. It was, in fact, a relationship of communion to share every experience of my city with Jesus in communion with the Holy Spirit.

Like any joyful discovery, this had to be shared with others. I began to invite others to join me for month-long prayer-walking challenges to intentionally pray for the peace of their own city. Soon, over a hundred people were participating in each of these challenges in dozens of countries. You can find the record of those challenges at www.twentynineseven.net.

Between the Rivers

What I did not realize was that God was preparing to birth something new. Reeling from the bad news that I would not be able to return to the city where I had spent nearly eight years walking every street, I felt God directed us back to the overwhelming need in South Asia. I simply could not bring myself to go anywhere else as I wrestled with God over the stats and graphs.

The more I learned about the largest unreached Muslim ethnic group in the world, the more I found myself almost fighting with God as I walked and prayed the streets of my home city. How could this be that they had so little going on? I told him how unjust I thought it was. His response was simple.

“I don’t think you care about them as much as you think you do. If you want my heart for them, then bring others and walk among them and ask for my heart.” Simultaneously, the picture of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Peniel jumped into my mind (Gen 32:22–31).

I developed a terse two-page call for anyone who wanted to join me to go after God’s heart for this massive unreached people. By the end, six teams of 63 people in total prayed on-site in nine cities over a seven-week period earlier this year. I could scarcely believe what God had done. 

However, he wanted to do more.

Out of that initial effort, we launched the Between The Rivers on-site prayer movement with the help of our brothers and sisters at Anatolian Harvest. Our goal is simple. We seek to saturate the lands between the Indus River in Pakistan and the Ganges/Padma River in Bangladesh with earnest prayer that God would powerfully open these lands and peoples to God’s Word, God’s people, and God’s will like he has never done before. In the end, we seek his heart for these peoples because our hearts are not strong or loving enough. Now, teams of four to seven people will increasingly move into unreached communities between those great rivers to ask God to open them in new ways to God’s Word, God’s people, and God’s will while seeking out people of peace whom God will use to change that place forever. Not only is this parcel of land the most unreached and complex place on earth but it is also the theater for the greatest move of God between the current day and the day we see Jesus face to face.

This first year, we had prayed to be able to send 10 teams between those rivers. As of May, we have already sent eight. In the end, we will likely send 18-20 teams, including our first two non-English speaking teams. Once again, God wants to do more.

If you would like to form or be a part of a Between The Rivers team, please send an email to between.the. [email protected].

It Is Time to Lead with Abiding Prayer

What I have come to realize is that Jesus really meant it when he instructed his disciples to abide in him.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing…If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:5,7).

For years, I relied on trainings and strategy and initiatives to bear fruit. I was confused because fruit did come. What I did not realize was that it did not come from me. It was the fruit of others who had prayed and spent long hours abiding in Jesus. He chose to use me to answer the prayers of others, but it was their fruit.

It is time to take Jesus at his word that the most instrumental, fruitful, and productive pursuit that we can do in ministry is to “waste” time abiding in him. When we do, fruit is borne. When we do, prayers get answered and things get done.

It is my strong conviction that South Asia exists to teach us to pray. No amount of initiative will accomplish this massive task. No method will stem the tide. We must learn to lead with abiding in Jesus, worshipfully waiting for him to do it right before our watching eyes.