Facilitated
by: Dr Sam Tillery and Pastor Andy Springer
(Sam Tillery)
I would like to start out with a praise
report. There is a group of us that meet with city officials
in sort of a round table type setting and we are representing
the Pastor's Prayer and Ministry and Alliance here in
Sonoma County. It is by invitation only by those cities
who have city reaches in the various cities and there
were those present from 26 different states.
They gather every year in a round table
discussion and compare notes and learn from one another
as we all seek to answer the prayer of Jesus in John
17. I was certainly encouraged by what we were able
to see and experience. You may not know that we have
been selected as one of the nine pilot cities in North
America being noted for transformation and how our community
is undergoing tremendous change because of our unity.
What that means is that the rest of
North America is looking to these nine cities as models
and examples as they may carry out the same Biblical
principals in their community. For the next three years,
the eyes of North America is on these nine cities. We
help each other during this highly concentrated season
of time and all of us are bit seasoned as we have been
at it for some time now, so that is an area that we
can thank the Lord for, but also an area of great responsibility
and we need to receive that with humble hearts. Not
that we are better than any other city, but there are
some very exciting things going on. We will talk some
more about these things later on tonight, but there
are many doors opening up.
One just happened here yesterday in
this room here behind us is the largest facility that
the city owns and if you were here for Spring Clean
last year, that is where we met. It was filled with
tables, each with about nine to ten leaders from the
city, county and the community of faith gathered for
the first time in the history of this city to compare
notes and to learn about how we can prepare the city
for disaster.
It is not a question of if an earth
quake will happen, but it is a question of when. Most
cities are divided. If you look at civil and county
government, everybody runs differently in there own
area and they are not working together. Because of the
unity of the churches through Spring Clean and our relationship
with the city and county, we have entered into a monthly
gathering with these city officials in preparation for
Spring Clean coming up the next few weeks. In the process
of that relationship building, we have had the opportunity
of meeting on a monthly basis, because we as a church
have united and blessed the city.
God says that they are
going to know we are His disciples by our love for one
another and if we bless and serve the
city. What I found was interesting at this large gathering
with the Mayor and the Vice Mayor and all of your other
city officials and we sought to resolve some of the
challenges of how do our different department areas
work together. That meeting came out of a meeting that
we had with the city officials about Spring Clean where
I had challenged the leaders in saying that the city
and the county really don't work together.
I shared the testimony of the impact
that it could have, and they saw it in action last year.
As a result of that, they came to us asking us what
they should do. God postured us to be able to share
how we have been praying together and that then gave
us the spring board to share how we could work together
with them. It was a very successful meeting here yesterday.
The last of the people that the city
thanked, was myself and the faith community. He said
that they especially wanted to thank Sam, that's myself,
and Adam Peacock, who is working with the city and county.
Because it was their idea and their challenge in the
church for us to unite as a county and city. To me,
it was not so much that he acknowledged our two names,
because we are just the connection that they have, but
it would be that they connected the dots that the church
is relevant.
And then, we were invited to a closed
meeting after to evaluate the large meeting, so there
were about twenty of us. It was interesting that God
allowed me to speak into the issues, because of the
issues that came out of hurricane Katrina and the lack
of organization there. For several sessions of the meeting
that we were in, we dealt with the issues of administration.
Many of the administrators from that
area began to give testimony of the chaos that was happening
as the various agencies were not aware of what the others
were doing and the people were caught in the middle,
so we were talking about how we as cities can mobilize
the people, a great evangelistic opportunity. A part
of being prepared for disaster is being prepared for
eternity, so being prepared in that area has allowed
us to speak into these other areas as well and bringing
us to be able to intermingle with the city and the community
of faith.
I have many other stories of being
able to be involved with the government, but as we have
been faithful to gather and pray, God has given us favor
and now we have to step into that favor and step into
a united church to meet those needs.
One more story, I had lunch today with
one of the administrators and we were talking about
Spring Clean and as we were talking I happened to get
a call from Andy saying that the room at Finley was
not going to be available, so as this administrator
overheard the conversation, he reached into his pocket,
pulled out his cell phone and began to call his contacts.
He then proceeded to tell me that if I couldn't get
into that room that I should call him on his cell later
that evening and that he would give me his private room.
That I would just have to go across the street to the
administrative building and there I could use the private
conference room. To me, that expressed trust and relationship
to the church and it all stems back to the fact that
the church is blessing the city and in relationship
we are making it clear that we are united in Christ.
I said it again today at lunch, "Jesus
Christ is what brings us together as churches".
He said, "You guys are a force to be
reckoned with". The Chief of Police
said that same statement as I met with him two weeks
ago. He said, "The united church is
a force to be reckoned with".
It doesn't matter that we are a small
group, because as we unite we represent many different
congregations and it is about being faithful and consistent,
not about the numbers. I just wanted to encourage you,
that as we gather like this, I don't look at the success
of it by how many come. That doesn't really matter to
me, it would be nice to have more, but breakthrough
is not dependent upon that, so your being here is very
significant. I have been rattling on now for too much,
but there is so much going on and it is hard for me
not to communicate it all to you in a direct result
of what's happening as we pray, but I am going to hand
it over to Harry for direction. We do need to be respectful
of the time, because we got permission to be here at
the Finley Center free of charge.
(Harry Skandera)
Before we go on and because we are
representing the body of Christ in this county, I am
going to ask Dave Richie if he would lead us in a prayer
of thanks for what Sam has been sharing.
How many here have been blessed by
the Pope? You know, you probable were not aware of it,
but I can pretty near guarantee that you've been blessed
by the Pope, because the Pope makes a practice of blessing
many people in the world and pretty much covers everybody.
How many of us here have been blessed by God? Ok. How
many of you here have been blessed by any other person
specifically in Jesus name? How many of you have blessed
another person?
We are here to pray for our city and
we are going to get there, but just to kind of loosen
us up a little bit in terms of getting ourselves in
the right posture before the Lord, I want to take the
next moment or two to bless the person on your left
and right. I am going to ask the Lord to give you a
blessing for each person on your right and your left.
I am going to ask Him to give you a specific blessing
for that person. You may actually feel like you have
something very particular to bless that other person
with.
Maybe you have some knowledge into
what might bless that other person or maybe God will
just download something to you for that person apart
from you knowing how to bless that person on your own.
After you have blessed them, I am going to ask you to
ask God's mercy on their life. Blessing and mercy, ok.
Let me pray and then I am going to leave it to you to
turn to your neighbor on your left or right.
(Harry Skandera)
Father, we just want to thank you this
night. We want to first of all thank you for the rain
Lord, because we acknowledge that it is a blessing that
falls on the just and the unjust and I know that, that
hits all of us somewhere. We thank you for the many
things that you have blessed us with, but most of all
we thank you for the blessing of loving us and us having
a relationship with you. Because of that relationship
Lord, we are asking that you would put on our heart
something for the person on either side of us. Lord,
that you would help us speak that blessing and let it
be uttered in Jesus name. Amen
Alright, your on your own.
Sometimes when we get together to pray
for the city, it can seem so theoretic and can seem
like it is somewhat at a distance and it is hard to
really link to it, but just as you turned to the right
or left and spoke blessing to the person next to you,
you can do that every day. You can do that to everyone
that you meet. Part of what we do in City Reach, is
that we speak blessing over our city and ask for God's
mercy over our city. It works out of 1 Corinthians 7:14
which reads; For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified
through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been
sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise
your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are
holy.
This is a very important principal.
We always automatically apply that to marriage, husbands,
wives and families, but the principal here is big and
it is repeated throughout scripture. The word sanctify
means to consecrate or set apart to the Lord.
When someone or something is sanctified,
it doesn't automatically imply salvation, rather it
means that the process of salvation begins. Paul tells
us that the process of sanctification for the unsaved
spouse actually begins when their partner is saved.
In other words, the influence of Christ in a saved person
has a drawing effect on the unsaved.
The unsaved spouse experiences the
blessings that come upon the saved. They are benefiting
by the prayer and influence of Godly example. So the
unsaved become an eyewitness of Christ's love as He
reveals Himself to and through a redeemed spouse.
I think we can hear a parallel, in
that same way, an unbelieving city. Our city is definitely
an unbelieving city at only about 7% attending church.
Our city can be sanctified by our prayers. I believe
that some of the things that Sam was sharing and that
have started in here, are the effect of a Godly influence.
Even a very evil region, one that is due the penalty
of divine wrath, can be set apart unto God, because
holy people are walking in it's cities and it's streets
or gathering in it's community centers praying.
Remember how Abraham asked for Sodom
and the principal there was that if there would have
been just 10 righteous, it would have been saved. That
is why we meet like this and why we gather and pray
for our city. We are not just beating the air, it is
not just some philosophy and we are not here, because
it is a nice thing to do. We are here, because as Jesus
said to his disciples, we are the salt of the earth.
We are the salt of Sonoma County and salt stops the
decay and it preserves and protects.
I am going to challenge us as we break
into groups and pray that we are sensitive to time and
to those around us, that we share the air time. Just
as we had listened and asked God to give us words for
the person on each side of us earlier, we are now going
to listen and pray into what is God's heart for the
city.
(Harry's prayer)
Father, we want to ask for your heart
for the city of Santa Rosa and in this moment and time.
We want to express and call out to you. Lord, let us
hear your heart for this place. Bring things to our
mind that we have witnessed or walked by in these days
and months and we ask Father that you would give us
your heart of mercy for this city and county. Amen.
Let's break up into groups of about
three and pray into God's heart in Santa Rosa.
(Prayer)
We should never fail to give testimony
to the blessing of God in our lives. Now, one last question,
what did we bless the city with and what is that going
to look like? If I am going to say, "I remember
that blessing, there it is right there in the front
page of the newspaper", or "Oh that is what
that looks like", because you see, I really believe
that we will see it in the front page of the newspaper,
because it will be that tangible. Usually as we pray
these things, there is a picture in our minds or some
sort of idea of what it is that we are seeing. For example,
if we pray for peace I am thinking of the break up of
the gangs and the relations between the ethnic groups.
We want to remember that as we pray,
God is commissioning us to speak blessing to the people
that are next to us and over our city, and if it is
that important to us then we want to be able to recognize
it when we see it so that we can give thanks, otherwise
we might think that it was something that we did.
(Sam Tillery)
Ok, before we transition to Andy and
his church plant here, I want to share something. Do
you all know what this is? It is a hacky-sack and it
is probably about $1.50, but this hacky-sack is very
important to me, because it was given to me as a gift
from Ed who had gotten for me when he was away on vacation.
He told me that the reason that he
picked out this multicolored hacky-sack instead of the
many plain colored ones was, because when he thought
of me and what we were about accomplishing in this city,
that it reminded him of me. I received it and when I
look at it I am aware and continue to pray that the
city is getting it. I would like for us to pray for
Ed. I told him today, before we started eating our hamburgers,
that he was a blessing to the city of Santa Rosa and
a blessing to the church of Jesus Christ in this city.
I told him that God is using him as a liaison in this
city between the city and the church. After I said that,
he looked at me as if he had never perceived anything
like that before.
Later on he thanked me for an email
that I had sent the woman that nobody sees, but she
dealt with all of the correspondence between Ed, myself
and the city. In the email I just thanked her for all
that she had been doing and for keeping us so well informed.
Apparently she went to Ed and showed it to him and he
them sent it to the Mayor, because we don't usually
get thanked like that. Well, that email was a product
of being prompted by God. If we listen carefully, God
prompts us to do things that may seem to be insignificant,
but they go a long ways in what God wants to do with
them. Could someone lift up Ed right now, that God would
protect him in his position and give him favor and that
he would come through this whole journey to a personal
relationship with Jesus Christ.
(Prayer)
So, now you have a specific name of
someone to pray for in the city instead of always just
a blanket prayer.
We are going to shift gears and pray
for our host tonight. We are in the community center
here tonight, but Andy Springer and a portion of his
team is here and they are going to be starting a church
in the near future.
Their first major event is going to
be Easter in the park and he is going to tell you a
little bit about that. Andy if you could share some
prayer points for us to be praying about for your new
ministry as it is getting started. Let me give a little
bit of background.
Andy is an answer to prayer as far
as I am concerned, and so are his family and team. First,
we are all for seeing new churches being planted in
this community. There are plenty of people in this community,
so there is no jealousy or feeling territorial about
it. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds
of people. Our prayer as Pastor's has been that those
who come into the city would have a heart for the city
and to unite with us so that we can take this city for
Christ together.
With Andy's background, like many of
ours, unity among diverse evangelical churches is not
something taught in our seminaries. It is not something
that we have grown up in. Andy didn't come here seeking
to unite, he just came seeking to respond to the great
commandment and to do what God called him to do, but
God began to put him in touch with us as he was at Pastor's
Prayer Fellowship on Wednesday and I think that he was
pleasantly surprised. We struck up a friendship and
I appreciate his heart, passion and team, so I decided
to have City Reach Prayer here at Finley where they
are going to be launching some things. We want to be
hearing how to pray specifically into their church,
so welcome to our city guys and share with us a little
bit on how we can pray.
(Andy Springer)
First, let me say Thank You to Harry
and Sam, because they organized this thing and I didn't
ask them to organize it around us, but I am grateful
for it. Something that I have learned lately is how
Christians can move the heart of God and you guys praying
for us means a great deal. I don't know if you understand
that as much as I can communicate, but your hearts towards
us means a lot.
All of us have traveled a long way
to come to Santa Rosa, and many people ask us, "Why
Santa Rosa"? The only way that I know to explain
it is that this city has a great opportunity to be very
influential in Northern California. If you are not from
here you don't understand the impact that Northern California
has on the rest of our country. California, Northern
California especially, San Francisco and the regions
there, have directed our country away from God for at
least a few decades now and maybe beyond that.
My culture and up-bringing has been
effected by it. My kids and the kids I work with have
been effected by the pull away from God that we have
experienced in our country. My heart in coming out here
was to try and stop that pull or to at least slow it
down, and we brought four ordained pastor's, one Bible
college graduate and four other Bible college graduates,
being our wives. We have two other single men,
one has three years of Bible college and the other who
is really a young Christian who has moved out here.
We've got ten children among us. I am the oldest guy
on the team and they remind me of that often.
I think the heart of ours is that if
we could pull it off today we would, but we would like
to start a church in Santa Rosa that would start churches
that would ultimately impact San Francisco, Sacramento
and Oakland. We can't accomplish that today, although
we would like to wave the magic wand and have it "boom"
be done, but our heart is that we believe that the Holy
Spirit witnesses in every city.
We believe that the Holy Spirit of
God needs opportunity to witness in those cities, and
the witness comes from the churches and the believers
in the city, so we are asking God that he will give
us the harvest that He has said is right, plentiful
and ready. We are asking God, "Give it to us. We
are a few laborer's going into your field. Now you said
that it was ready, so show us where it is."
We came with that prayer on our heart
and then we met these guys who are really living out
a lot of our dreams, many of the things that we have
been talking about. When I would begin to say what we
wanted to do or said, "Hey, we need to do this...",
we were told that it was already being done, so after
that we began to think that we chose the wrong city.
No, I am just kidding, we are here
and know that this is where we need to be. I am just
excited to see how our hearts are going in sync and
obviously the Spirit of God has already been preparing
the way. I was encouraged by the leadership of the pastors
and I will be honest with you, I never considered the
pastors when I thought of coming out here. We never
thought about the religious sect of our city. We were
concentrating on the businesses, teens, kids, parents
and civics, but we weren't thinking of the church and
spiritual people. We thought, "We are not going
to keep the aquarium, we are going to go fish for men".
We were not thinking about this group,
but I'll be honest with you, it is a revelation to me
on how impacting you can be on our lives. All of that
said, it was just kind of visionary development for
you so that you can kind of get an idea where our heart
it. We are missionaries in America and that may be a
strange term for many, but unless we reach America,
which is the most influential and hated countries in
the world, yet also one of the most wonderful. America
holds the most man power and money and by the way it
has the message of the Gospel which can be spread, so
our heart is to reach America so that we can reach the
world and thus fulfill the great commission.
That is what we believe can happen.
I don't believe that it can happen talking about it
or because we think that it is right to do, obviously
it can start with twelve, but it's got to be twelve
highly motivated believers. Anyway, in all of that I
just want you to understand that we are not here to
compete or start another thing-a-majigger, we just want
to glorify Christ, because that is really what it is
all about. I don't do anything for Andy Springer, because
it is not about Andy Springer, it is about Jesus Christ.
If you want to know a prayer request,
first of all I would want you to pray that God will
help me to grow in the sense that God would increase
and I would diminish and that God would be seen and
be evident. I don't mean in a hocus-pocus way, but that
when we impact and come into people's lives, that they
walk away saying that they met someone who knows God
and I want to do it for His glory. I do not believe
that there is any other reason to do what we are supposed
to do. God doesn't compete for kingdom ship or for glory.
If you want to glory for yourself, then go ahead and
do that, but he would rather us bask in Him, so I ask
you to pray that for me, that God would help me make
sure that my motives are not about me, but that they
are about His glory.
The second thing to pray for is that
we have a lot of people here. They are some very well
trained, very talented young men and ladies that we
call our team. I don't know if you have watched many
movies, but some of my favorite movies are about coaches
who have a team that they are trying to get to be a
team. You know, they have all of this talent on the
team, but they can't seem to act like a team. I will
be very candid with you, we need our team to gel. I
am convinced that the devil knows this, that if we do
gel, that the devil knows our potential and he is at
work with us.
It is not like there is a bunch of
fighting and nastiness, but it's not coming together
like it could. The well orchestrated machine needs God
to say, "Ok, guys, here is what we are doing".
What I am asking you to do is to ask God to gel our
team. To make it a real team instead of just a talked
about team. That there would be unity and not unifying,
that there would be a one-ness with one mind, one speech
and one heart, because some of our guys are having to
work, some even two jobs, so it is hard for them to
focus. A double minded man is unstable, so it unstableness
the whole network.
I ask that you to pray for my family's
health and my son Andrew hasn't had an asthma attack
for a couple months now, but we to continue to pray
for the health of our families. For example, Michael
just got an ear infection today and these little kids
get sick really easy which is a real drain on mom and
dad, so we need your prayers keeping in mind that we
have ten of those little kid'oes in our team.
Please pray for our safety as well.
Our forth request would be for financial support. Don't
take this wrong. Rich and I have raised personal support,
but one thing that I failed to do was to raise work
fund like I should have. What I need to do is to get
back on the phones and start contacting guys and communicating
vision and working the system in a sense. You guys may
not be used to, but there are pastors watching us that
are saying that they want to help us, but I haven't
been able to get on the phone and say, "Hey man,
we need you". We are going to have to pay for rent,
for a place and we are going to have to start making
some serious financial commitments to some places.
We have promises, but you can't live
and eat on promises, so I say it personally that we
are doing fine, but I wouldn't mind seeing our whole
team supported. I wouldn't mind seeing men catch a vision
of what a team can do, like the Apostle Paul had when
he was running around. If you could pray for recruiting
men, raising money and reaching multitudes, that is
what my heart is. I want to recruit men for Northern
California, I want to raise money for Northern California
and I want to reach the multitudes of California.
You are living in the fifth largest
economic system in the world, it might be down to seven
now, but that is still pretty big. There is a lot of
resource, manpower and money. It's here and the opportunities
to reach the world are here. So, please pray for all
of that, and on the short term, we need God to let the
sunshine. I need you to fast and pray for that, you
know Elijah had like passions like we do and he got
to move the God of heaven on that thing, so I need you
to seriously make this a matter of prayer for this event
on Saturday for our Easter outreach.
We are spending 8,000 dollars on this
event next Saturday to reach hopefully hundreds of families.
We are not trying to just get them into the kingdom
like one, two, three, but we are looking to build relationship.
We are doing a huge event right here in the courtyard
on this Saturday before Easter from 10 am - 6pm. If
it doesn't sunshine, I doubt people will come out and
I say doubt pretty strongly with the past three weeks
of solid rain that is not even supposed to be here.
Please pray that God will let it sunshine that day.
Beyond that, many of you are involved in helping out
on that day and we are trying to be as organized as
possible. I am not an organizer, I am an agonizer and
we are doing our best to put this thing together and
I think that we have done the best that we can, so please
ask God to give us clear direction. I need to have a
message for that day. I want to address the crowd, I
want to share our heart and tell them what we are doing,
so that kind of stuff needs prayer.
(Sam Tillery)
He is not doing this alone. Some other
churches are stepping in to help be a part of that.
(Andy Springer)
We've got three other churches in addition
to ours helping out not, so that is a praise. Any of
you are welcome to come and please do invite your friends
and family, because we want you to invite people.
(Sam Tillery)
You know, that is a testimony, because
you didn't seek those churches out did you? The idea
is that the heart of the city is to embrace one another’s
visions and work together as the body of Christ. If
you could introduce your team here that would be great
and then I will give the rest of us some instruction
as to how we are going to pray.
(Andy Springer)
Over here is my wife Becky. She is
married and I am happily married (ha, ha, ha) and we
will be twelve years married in June. She is the greatest
thing that has happened to me since I got saved when
I was seventeen. My little 10 year old Hannah is here.
She is a little live wire and is finishing up the fourth
grade. Andrew and Abigail were here a little bit ago.
Here to my left is Rich and he is becoming a good friend
of mine. We have been working together for almost two
years and I think that it is so neat how God has put
us together. It is very unique how we almost think for
one another and he is a great partner in crime here,
so if you could be praying for him. His wife Sabrina
was here with all of the little red head kids. The rest
of our team that is not here are all working or sick,
so we tried to get them here, but they stayed home.
(Sam Tillery)
What we would like to do is to have
groups of you go to these individuals and pray specifically
for each of them.
(Prayer)
(Sam Tillery)
We want to remember to be praying for
those who are going to Israel. These are not just people
going to see the land or to tour, but as delegates,
intercessors, church people and pastors. I think that
right now there are about 40 that will be going from
Sonoma County and Marin County. We need to be praying,
because we will be there to pray and listen to God and
then will be bringing back to this community what God
has for us to be about doing in partnering with those
in Israel and stronger relationships with the body of
Christ.
We also want to be in prayer for this
Finley Center as it is a center where we are gathering,
but also because it is going to be the new home for
Andy's church plant and is now the home of the New Day
Christian church. We ought to pray for their church
ministry as well. Let their light so shine brightly
as they reflect Christ here and shine the light for
Him in this community.
Thank you again for being here. For
the next City Reach Prayer location you can check the
web at www.unitedprayer.org. To find out more about
Andy and his team's church, you can go to srtown.org.
There is also a web site for Spring Clean it is, www.spring-clean.net
.
Special Thanks to Christelle Eddy
who transcribed this document.
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