July
5 2002 City Reach Prayer
Introduction by Dr. Harry Skandera, Elder at the Santa Rosa Christian Church
Meeting was held at City Life Fellowship Santa Rosa CA
And over the years, that for businesses and businessmen, a lot of the times the highest vision we’ve had for businessmen in the church is that they could go out and be prosperous and thereby provide money as it were a cash cow for the real ministry in the church and no doubt, there’s been purpose in that and there’ve been many times when that in fact has been a way that God has provided for, that’s the way He’s brought those cattle on a thousand hills into the corral so we could use them. But God isn’t necessarily limited to that – the business community, or anything else and neither should we be. And neither should we look at the businesses as simply a place to make money so that we can do the real work of the ministry. Right? So we want to, as we begin to pray about that, we want to be sure that we aren’t stuck in a paradigm that limits the way we begin, as we pray for businessmen and the business community. Because they, and particularly in our city, have a very, have been a very catalytic group. I suspect that this city may not be transformed until we discover the true calling of the businessmen in this community. And so, we want to think about that as we pray. It’s not just about praying for prosperity as we always do for our city, or for the businessmen in it. But it’s about the calling and the ministry that God wants to bring forth within the business-sphere and as well as many of us, our brothers and sisters who engage daily in the business world. So, how many here tonight would consider that your main sphere of activity would be business?
Now for those of you who sense that that is your main sphere, what is it that has been significant to you, what is it that you fell like is your calling in business? Somebody want to answer? What’s your purpose? How do you serve God by the way you spend the majority of your time in your business? Anybody? Okay, your plight as principals in the way you conduct your business … Okay, right relationships within the setting of the business structures. What would that look like Jim? What might be an example of that? Okay, you know for much of my Christian walk, my own personal paradigm was one in which I, uh, I considered the kind of thing that we talked about earlier. The “real ministry” was in the pastoral work or in the church. And certainly the church is a real key to ministry anywhere. In fact, I would think that when we think about Jesus visiting us. When we think about our cities being transformed, we think about the church as being carrying, hopefully carrying the heart of God. But the reality is that there is a big difference between something being the heart of it and being the center of it. And too often I think, I know I did for many years, when I considered God redeeming others and the community, I always thought about the church as being really the center of all activity and as I got involved in the business world, I realized that there were so many hundreds of thousands of people whose lives really, the church wasn’t the center of their world. And that doesn’t mean that the church isn’t the center of things, but I think there’s a big difference when we begin, as we begin to pray for something, to realize that the church and its work may be the heart and should carry the heart of God for a place, but it may in fact may not be the center of the way things are coming down in a community. As a matter of fact, maybe more the actual activities in a community occur where people spend five of the seven days a week of their life, not where they spend, as in our community, maybe an hour and a half.
So, again, as we lay the groundwork for praying tonight, I want to pray in a couple of areas. One, we want to pray specifically for this area right down here, downtown, this part, particularly this new convention center, I think this is very significant. Sam and I were talking about it today, in that number one, the stated goal of this is to bring more business into this area. This isn’t a tourist thing over here. It’s a convention center and naturally there’ll be tourists who come there, but the idea behind it is that it would generate and encourage business and business conventions to come into this area.
Now this is not new to our city. We may not have had a convention center here before, but almost from the time, from really at least the 1870’s, 1880’s, and on, Santa Rosa has been a place where people would come as a kind of retreat, as a kind of place to come away, as a kind of a place to plan for other things, to receive vision for what they were doing. I think we only need to look at Bohemian Grove, which has been carrying on in activity like that for over 100 years within our county, to realize that there’s a real significance as to you know, as the way things gather here in this county.
So when we consider again praying for this convention center, we want to remember that this can be something that could be very redemptive. An opportunity that the Lord could bring many people in and out of this community that would not only have an impact on this particular city and county, but across the nation and beyond. As it turns out, the manager of the convention center across the way is a Christian. So we want to pray into that.
The second thing we want to pray about is the business community as a whole in Santa Rosa and in Sonoma County. I think one of the first places we’d want to consider is that God would shed His light into the business community. Not only for blessing, but to reveal any areas of darkness. You know we began to pray this way a couple of years ago, for the church. And, if you watch the newspapers in Sonoma County and actually across the country, you’d be very aware of different areas of darkness that have been exposed to light, particularly in the Catholic church.
And I believe that that’s one thing that we really need to do as far as some of our very first praying into a situation. Let there be light. Let God shed His light into any dark places. Naturally we pray that way for our own lives, that there wouldn’t be any hidden things. Now we need to pray that into our community as well. And so tonight, the second thing we want to pray for is that we pray for any areas that let there be light shed into the business community. The kind of light that one, reveals darkness and secondly, provides for prosperity and growth.
The third area that we want to pray into is that God would put His hand upon our brothers and sisters that are in this, who are given to this sphere. We want to take a few minutes toward the end of this and ask those of you who raised your hands earlier that are specifically most predominantly involved in business, we want to pray for you. But, we also, before we do that, we want to pray that God would raise up businessmen throughout His body to have a vision for this city and county that is beyond just their sphere.
Okay? Those three things and then fourth, we’ll pray for those of us who are in business. Okay, any questions?
Okay Randy? We’d like you to break up in groups of four, no more than five and the idea is that we’re going to intermesh the body of Christ. So, we have a tendency to kind of sit next to someone we know. Well, ah, try not to have your group if it’s all everybody you know, then that’s part of what want to do, is break that down, the walls down and unite together as a collective body of Christ. So feel free to jump, stand up right now, and just kind of start circle and put some chairs around and find yourself a circle perhaps that you may not know somebody. And, uh, shuffle around. Kind of get far enough apart so that you don’t interrupt your groups. You can move the chairs. Just turn them around and …
Now we’re going to remind you along the way of those three areas. So as you kind of introduce yourself within your group, we’d like you to spend a little time praying for the convention center and what that represents in the city and so pray into that, then we’ll give you some direction for the next area that we’ve talked about. So go ahead, introduce yourself and begin to pray into the areas about the purposes that God has for the convention center and how God will use that both now and in the future as to the purposes He has for the city.
PRAYER TIME –
Hugh Codding made a statement, “This is my town,” and I thought that was very significant because Hugh Codding had a vision. We need to see brothers and sisters in Christ who have that kind of vision saying, “This is your town.” And that their total dedication from within the business community is that that would be so. Let’s pray into that.
PRAYER TIME –
Okay, try to wrap it up in another minute or so and then we’re going to take some, a few minutes, before we break to pray for those in our midst that are working in the business community.
PRAYER TIME –
Okay, let’s break from your small groups and reassemble as a large group. If we could have the business people, if you’ll come right on up here, those if you’re in business, part of the business community, if you’ll come right up here and stand in front of me. Anybody else, business, you don’t have to own a business, if you’re in business. Why don’t you guys come up in a big huddle right here, just like you’re real close together, and I’m going to ask the rest of you to come on up and surround them and let’s pray into this group that God’s purposes, God’s plan, that His light would shine from these and into the business community. So kind of move forward and surround them, you can get close, and just as the Lord would lead you, let’s pray into this group – God’s blessing.
PRAYER TIME –
We’re gonna shift now to our host ministry, Citylive Fellowship. And, I’m going to ask that Pastor Adam, if you’ll come and share briefly with us. Now the reason he’s sharing is so that we can be informed as to how to pray for them. Okay, and then you may have some others that you would like to have share, but listen carefully that God would give you some direction of how we can pray this next hour into God’s blessing upon this ministry.
It’s really a pleasure to have all of you here tonight praying with us. And we’re so grateful at City Life Fellowship to just feel the life of the church of God in Sonoma county coming and praying on our behalf and standing with us. I’d like just to, I’m really interested in just prayer on our behalf tonight, so I’d like to keep my remarks somewhat brief, but as Pastor Sam was sharing, I think it’s helpful so that we can have some informed intercession. So if you would just bear with me a couple of minutes.
First of all I want to let you know a couple things about our background. We started meeting at City Life Fellowship about seven years ago. We have no denominational affiliation but we’re part of a network of churches called the Fellowship of Christian Leaders and it’s a network of churches that reaches into Europe and New Zealand and Central America and those things, but it’s primarily in the United States. And we are really blessed to have two intercessors from our closest sister church in Novato with us. They came tonight to join with us tonight in prayer and we’re glad to have Kim and Jackie with us.
Over the years, one of the things that we’ve most consistently emphasized as a body is the building of strong family units, the importance of believers coming to maturity in Christ, and the application of the Word of God to every aspect of personal and social living. We had at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year we’ve had just a reformation as it were with our church. We at the end of last year, we went to our leadership team for our network of churches and we said, “Help!” We said we really believe God wants to do something new in us and with us as a people. And so they agreed and they came in and we began a process that has us really again in a place of reformation.
We put in a new eldership in February. I just started pastoring in February so that’s something to pray for specifically, is all of those new issues and we’re really excited about what God is doing and we really have a sense that He’s going to allow us to take treasures old as well as bring forth treasures new in this season for us. And so we’re excited about that. Currently, in the midst of this you’d expect with a bit of a re-formation of structure and those sorts of things that that would be accompanied by a re-formation of vision. And that’s exactly what’s happened.
In one of the passages of Scripture, that over the last number of months has been something that a lot of things have related to is Numbers chapter 14 and many of you are probably familiar with it, but this is after the spies went into the land they came back to give a report to the people and they gave a bad report. And Numbers 14 deals with how Moses and God are sorting out what’s going to happen here as a result of this act of the leaders of these tribes and these spies and the people in general. And there’s so much that can be taken from that passage of Scripture. But it’s interesting that towards the culmination of the discussion with Moses and God, there’s a lot that comes out of it. In verse 21, God makes a promise and He says, “But indeed as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.” It’s an awesome promise and it’s a special type of promise. We know in Hebrews, that the author of Hebrews says that when God swears by Himself; by His own character, by His own existence, by His own nature, that’s the highest level of promise possible. Because He would cease being God if that was not going to come about.
So this is an emphatic word from God that His intention is that His glory is going to fill the whole earth. And there’s a couple things that we’re drawing from the context of this chapter as a people that’s important and I’d like to share those with you and then talk specifically about how we can pray around them.
Firstly, based upon the context of that passage, it’s clear that God intends to use His people as part of how He intends to fill the earth with His glory. The whole context of the Scripture is God saying it might not be this people, based on their report, but I will have a people, and we know in Christ, that’s the body of Christ, I will have a people who represent Me in the earth. And so we’re hearing such a clear call to partnership with God that we’ve got to put our hand to the plow and not turn back to the work of the Gospel and the things that God has for us to share with Him and to get involved in the yoke with Him.
Secondly, and this is fascinating to me, is that in the context of the discussion between God and Moses, Moses as he was sharing, showed clearly he understood that it wasn’t just the people coming out of Egypt that was the issue, that the people were coming into the promised land. And he says, if the people die in the wilderness, Your glory is not going to be complete in the nations. They’re going to say, “He had the strength to take them out of Egypt, but he didn’t have the strength to bring them into the promises.”
And I believe even as that was the challenge of that generation, it remains the challenge of our generation that many people have seen Christians come out of bondages but they haven’t seen them come into the promises of God in the way that the Scripture says. And one of the things that I know about the world is the world is great in trading bondages. See, people leave drunkenness for Islam; they leave materialism for humanism. And even though now they’re doing great work in an orphanage somewhere, it’s out of a bondage to humanistic thinking and humanistic society. So people come out of bondages, out of one bondage and into another bondage all the time. But the world is looking for people who will come into the promises of God.
It’s such a powerful thing for and I’m not talking about a faith message necessarily, I’m talking about the types of things that Paul talks about in Romans 8: a life free from condemnation, a life where no matter what your circumstances are, you know that nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. A life where you’re sensitive to the Spirit of God and you know what to do and how to pray and where to go. In the many hundreds of promises, that when we come out of the bondage of sin we’re supposed to be journeying towards in God. And so that’s challenging us as a people, not just to celebrate the fact that we’re no longer in the bondages that we’ve been in, but to press forward out of our wanderings and into the things that are supposed to be a part of the normal life of a Christian in Christ.
Thirdly, this whole promise of filling the earth with the glory of God, means that the church is supposed to have an influence on every aspect of life in the community. That it’s not just within the four walls of the church that He wants His glory, but he wants it in the business community; He wants it at City Hall; He wants it in the post office. And, so we’re really believing for that. I am so blessed tonight that the focus was around praying for the business community and that sphere because I believe God wants His glory shown in Sonoma county through our businesses.
I’ll just editorialize something that came up in our prayer time that really struck me when we were talking about being a transformed city and being a city that shines light not just to the city but to the world. We have an international platform in the wine industry here. And it’s international. I mean they’re doing grapes in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, all over the world. It’s a lucrative industry and we have a key influential place in that here. I want to see revival in the wine industry be cause I’m telling you if we learn how to run something like that according to the purposes of God, you know, it’s going to have an impact in the world. So that’s just an example of what we’re talking about and how this entire community is supposed to show the glory of God.
So let me get to some specifics for us in prayer. The first thing is that you can hear, hopefully, a passion in terms of these general areas. But God’s calling us to get specific as a congregation with our people. One of the things that I believe, and this is why informed intercession is important, is that general prayers tend toward general answers, but specific prayers tend toward specific answers. And I believe it’s the same with vision. I believe that a general vision serves us in a general way but a specific vision serves us in a specific way and allows us to see dynamic answers to prayer, dynamic advances of the Gospel.
And we need to get specific at City Life Fellowship. We’ve got some great general things that God has given us; we’re summing up what I’ve shared from Numbers 14 in this way: We believe that God’s glory is to be shown in Sonoma county to everyone in everyway, everywhere. That’s what we believe. It’s interesting the man who is running Coke, the CEO of Coca-Cola, from 1930- to the 1950’s, he had a vision, this was his business mission statement: That by the time he stopped working for Coca-Cola, every single person in the world would have tasted Coca-Cola at least once. That’s an amazing vision. That’s an awesome vision.
I want to see in our generation, by the grace of God, every single person who calls Sonoma county home to have tasted the glory of God at least once. That they would have said whatever they’re going to do or not going to do with it, they would have said I can’t deny that I’ve just touched God. That I just saw God in some way. And that’s a church thing. That’s not a City Life thing, but we believe that we’ve got a part of it. We believe there’s specific people that we’re supposed to touch. We believe that there’s specific ways that we’re supposed to show the Gospel. We believe there’s specific neighbor-hoods, specific businesses, specific schools that we’re supposed to have an influence on that we’re supposed to cover in prayer and we need to get specific.
When you’re praying, we believe there’s some specific public schools that God wants to put on our hearts and we’re asking God to show us exactly which ones those are so we can begin to pray into them. We believe there’s some specific businesses; we’re here in this Railroad Square area, some specific businesses in the square that we’re supposed to pray over and provide intercessory covering for and see some things. And specific people – this is a huge one for us as a church – because I don’t know about you but it’s so easy just to see the people you know in accordance with the general vision. But I believe that there’s specific people that members of City Life Fellowship are best equipped to show the glory of God to.
For me it’s very personal because I’ve got a background in volleyball. I played volleyball at UCLA and enjoyed being on a successful team even though I wasn’t necessarily a great player. But you know it’s a platform for me because most of the volleyball community, UCLA’s won the national championships a lot, so they recognize that as something and I really believe there’s a very influential group of volleyball players. There’s this network that I’m a part of of volleyball players, there’s I think six public school teachers, the coaches of both universities, numbers of key people that are there and I believe that God has made me specifically capable of reaching that community.
See, the vision, the general vision became specific for me and my wife and I and my church is praying around us specifically into that network of people and I want to see that for each and every aspect of our church that we could get specific. So you could really serve us in praying in that way. So that’s the first general thing going from general to specific.
Secondly, we need to, there’s a degree of strength, I mentioned earlier that we’ve had an emphasis over the years on maturing as believers. And there’s a degree of strength with us as individual believers but that strength is not yet translated to us as a community. Does that make sense? In some way we haven’t learned to function as a community in the way that we need to and we’re growing in that capacity and we believe that God has said and it’s neat, you see it from the Scriptures, that the doorway to what the church experienced as a community in Acts chapter 2 was the sending of the disciples when they were first called Apostles in Matthew chapter 10. That was the first time, and they sent them out two by two. And it’s hard sometimes to just build communities as a big group but you can break down walls very quick two by two. And so we’re believing that God is going to start joining us in teams within our congregation, two by two. And there’s something specific things and opportunities to facilitate that but if you could pray generally that God would strengthen as a community towards a common vision, you know a common heart in those things and that He would link people up two by two in ministry together.
And finally, the last thing is that on Wednesday of next week, July 10th, we’re having a family meeting for our congregation and because we’re in the midst of reformation, we’re just taking baby steps. We’re taking a little bit of it at a time and so this is going to be an opportunity for us to talk about God’s heart for the next steps we’re going to take in the fall. We believe that now is the time we’ve got to lay the foundation for the things we’re supposed to be about in this city and in our family in the fall. And so we really want to pray around that meeting. We want to pray that the vision is received with faith; we want to pray that the right counsel emerges in the midst of it and one of the specific things we know we’re supposed to be involved in as a church is Vertical Call. Which if you’re not aware is a solemn assembly, ten days of prayer. It’s going to be held at the Fairgrounds, October 17th – 26th, and this is something that’s emerged out of CLC, if you know that church, but it’s really something that is now being supported county-wide and particularly being driven out of the Pastor’s Prayer Fellowship. And we believe as a church that we would be disobedient to God if we weren’t really involved in this and so we’re praying that not only would God give us creative ways to be involved, but that as a people we’ll really catch the Vertical Call vision. And we’re going to be sharing more of that at the meeting on the 10th, so I know I was going fast. I trust that’s specific for us for prayer and will help us in that direction. So I want to thank you again for just being here with us and ahead of time for your prayers.
What we would like you to do is to break back up into your groups that you were in, but we would like someone from City Life Fellowship to be in each group, okay? So go ahead and break up into your groups right now. And we may not know you from City Life, so if you’ll just kind of take a look at these groups and work your way making sure each, that there’s someone in each group and begin to pray.
Anybody need a City Life person? All right, pray into these areas, now this is a time of prayer, so just take it right to prayer.
PRAYER TIME
If you’ll begin to wrap up the prayer in your group. What we’d like to know is ask that if Adam and his leadership team would come up and grab a chair and form a circle in the chairs here.
I just want to introduce a couple of people for you. We have four elders and their wives in our congregation. This is Rich Sundall and he and his wife Jackie serve with us and Becky Madison and her husband, Peter, and she serve in that way. The Danfords, many of you know Mike and Suzanne Danford. He’s a school board member and a dentist and has been in this community for years. They’re sick tonight. Their family is sick so if we could pray for them. And then myself and my wife Joanne. And my wife is due to give birth any minute. So if we can pray for her as well.
So if we could have your elders and their wives if they are here with them to come on up and grab a seat. Great. I’m going to ask that we would come forward, surround them and pray specifically in the areas of leadership and wisdom and such as God would lead you. But let’s lay hands on them and pray God’s blessing and strength over this leader-ship team.
PRAYER TIME
Father tonight, we represent various different local churches and we have come together, asking that You would bring Your blessing upon this city, this county. Father we represent not a large number, but we represent congregations of hundreds of people and as we stand, representing you first and then our local churches, we are thankful that Your Word says that You are pleased as we come together and agree as one. So Father, for each of these things we’ve brought before You, we thank You for their answers. Give us eyes to see clearly how You unfold Your incredible blessings. And Father as we move shortly in our different directions, we pray for clear eyes to see through all the fog and all the things to Your glory and greatness: may it shine forth from our lives as we unite together as one body. So bless we pray and we give You thanks in Christ’s most precious name. Amen.
If you’ll make your way back to your seats for just a moment, and we’ll wrap up. A few quick announcements. Next month City Reach, the first Friday of every month, will be in the City of Sonoma. And you can check the website for details and map and all that as far as that’s concerned. In September we’ll be at Santa Rosa Christian Church. And then in October we’ll be at CLC and then it’s open for any church who would like to invite for November and December and finish out the year.
A couple of things from the Pastor’s Prayer Fellowship you can be praying for. We are hosting the Pastor’s Prayer Fellowship an area-wide 9/11 community memorial service on 09/11 which is a Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m., September 11th at the Luther Burbank Center. So be in prayer for that as we’re inviting city officials. We’re inviting law enforcement, fire, rescue. We’ve had a wonderful response from the different law enforcement and I’ve talked with a number of fire chiefs and they’re excited about the time. But we want to honor them. We want to pray for them and bless them as we remember what happened on 09/11, we also want to remember those who serve our specific community and pray God’s protection and blessing upon them. So it’s an opportunity for the church to reach out to the community and bless them and encourage them. So you want to mark that on your calendars and take that back to your pastors and put it on there that instead of Wednesday night, whatever you might do, the body of Christ will unite up at the Burbank Center for that evening, so be in prayer for that.
And then on August the 25th which is a Sunday afternoon, we’ll be doing a prayer walk and the specifics on that are still being worked on, but like we did last year, we kind of walked, we drove around to the gateway areas of our community and drove stakes into the ground and prayed and blessed and we’ve been seeing tremendous changes as a result of that but we’ll be doing another prayer walk and so you can stay in tune with the unitedprayer.org website. We’ll give you the specific information on that as the time moves on. Harry did you have any announcements? Very good, ah you’re dismissed. We’re about five minutes early. Great.
Special thanks to Officer David Childress of the Santa Rosa Police Dept for transcribing this recording for Pastors Prayer City Reach Prayer meeting.