March 2021 Prayer Powerlines

“Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn,”
(Isaiah 60:30).

March 2021: Stages of Ministry

SUNDAYS • Six stages of ministry

OMF workers labor toward Indigenous Biblical Church Movements (IBCMs). We can describe IBCMs in six stages, their first letters spelling the word DISPEL. Pray that the “unreachedness” of East Asia’s people will be dispelled as well as our indifference and lack of faith to reach others.

MONDAYS • Discernment

We begin (and continue) with discernment, seeking God’s face to discover those groups and communities without a gospel witness. We research the people, their needs and, driven by a holy dissatisfaction, pray and invite others to pray. This includes prayer walks, ethnographic research and looking for what God is doing. Pray for field leadership’s discernment and the development of prayer resources, as there are still hundreds of unreached groups.

TUESDAYS • Inroads

Pray for inroads among the people God puts on our hearts and that God will provide answers as we ask these questions: how can faithful and equipped witnesses live and share among the unreached? Which skills of believers does the community and government welcome? Teaching? Business? Compassionate work? How will these workers learn the culture, language and worldview of these people? Who will mobilize and send these workers?

WEDNESDAYS • Sowing

Sowing is the third stage of DISPEL. The gospel needs to be shared in sensitive, culturally relevant ways. Sometimes Scriptures still need to be translated. Pray that field workers will share wisely and appropriately. Arts, social media and online ministries all play a catalyzing role. Pray for discernment of open doors and where to sow the Good News.

THURSDAYS • Planting

The purpose of sowing is to make connections with new believers and to find those who are open to hearing and receiving the Good News. Pray that churches will be planted, and for new believers being discipled. Pray that new believers will reach out to their own people, in spite of persecution.

FRIDAYS • Enabling

Pray for the emerging indigenous church to become self-supporting, self-propagating, self-governing and self-theologizing.  The missionary’s role changes from pioneering into enabling the new church to reach their own as locals plant their own churches and train their own leaders.  Pray for missionaries to do well at modeling, assisting, then watching and ultimately leaving, so that the church plant can exist independent of missionaries.

SATURDAYS • Launching

The Great Commission comes full cycle when the new church movement begins reaching out in missions cross-culturally to other unreached peoples, as partners in God’s global church. As these partners launch a new church, they themselves mobilize, train, send and set up missionary sending structures (Indigenous Mission Movements or IMM). Pray for the OMF teams that walk alongside these IMMs, and for the IMMs role in fulfilling the Great Commission.

TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF VERSION OF OUR PRAYER POWERLINES NEWSLETTER, CLICK HERE.