Several leaders in this area are seeking to rally the whole city behind various causes and agendas. We have received invitations from various groups, some of whom are very outspoken against one another. That leaves us trying to pick and choose which meetings, rallies and revivals we should connect with in order to restore the city.
We learned a valuable lesson back in our years in St. Louis. Our pastor and church were in a very similar position in our early years of growth. In larger cities, there are hundreds of agendas and efforts being made to revive it, so our pastor was getting invitations from all over the city and even several from around the country with all the rallies to revive America.
Our pastor came to a place where he just stopped trying to respond the invitations and he even stopped trying to rally the whole city to come to our gatherings. Instead, he just began to focus on us, the church family. When he invited out of town guest, he didn’t announce it to the city. The guests (some were high profile) were brought to St. Louis to minister to US. Our pastor stopped attending the major national church conferences and poured everything into his own church family.
The result was that we became a powerful prayer ministry in our city. We became so associated with prayer that when prominent people approached me and my wife regarding a huge Teen Mania, Acquire the Fire event that was coming to our city, they asked us to lead the intercessory prayer team. Whenever some crisis hit our area, the call would always come for our church to lead out in prayer.
That’s how the Lord is leading us today. God didn’t tell us to come to Harrisburg and try to win, rally or revive the whole city. God sent us to Harrisburg and told us to bring FAMILIES together. That doesn’t mean every family in Harrisburg is being called to attend Urban Life. It just means God has given us a mandate to call families together. God sent us to Harrisburg to share our lives and the Word with very specific people. Our dream is not to reach ALL of Harrisburg. Our dream is to minister to the ONES.
In fact, I think it’s very arrogant of church leaders to attempt to organize and administrate the move of God. Too many pastors and churches are still trying to “get together” to put on events. I’m not down with that. If each of us would just do our assigned task, and just trust that God knows what HE is doing all over this city, we could finally stop the madness of trying to orchestrate a revival.
I trust the Lord enough to actually believe that HE will connect us, and unite us, as HE uses us to do His will. We may never know how it was done. We may not be aware of half of what is happening. That’s a good thing. We don’t need a revival in the spotlight of television and the internet. We need revival in the secret place of our hearts and homes.
