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Ralph Neighbour- The Power of Prayer

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Ralph Neighbour gives this stunning description of prayer in the Ukraine

The Power of Prayer

 

 

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by Ralph Neighbour

Perhaps a million pages have been published through the years on the subject of prayer. Men like E. M. Bounds and Watchman Nee are a couple of my favorites, and you have others to add to the list.

The problem is not that we need another series on prayer to be penned. It is the issue of praying where we are deficient. TOUCH Outreach Ministries surveyed 500 pastors from our mailing list of those purchasing cell materials in 1986 and we learned that they averaged, by their own admission, praying seven minutes a day!

I have been powerfully impacted by Pastor Vladimir Muntyuan who has founded and led the Regeneration Church in the Ukraine. He was raised in a communist city and had no contact with religion as he grew up, spending much of his youth in prison. At 19 he had so abused his body doctors sentenced him terminal and sent him home to die. It was then he met his first Christian who witnessed to him on the street and gave him a copy of the scriptures. As he read it he was thunderstruck with the God who healed. He determined to fast and pray until he met Christ. He had a Pauline confrontation with Him and was instantly restored to total health! From the start, prayer was precious to him.

I could write pages about this man’s ministry and how he now leads one of the fastest growing cell movements on earth. But I want to focus on his prayer life. On one of my first trips to coach his church I came to lead a major weekend training event. He greeted me by saying, “I will not be with you. I am going to the Crimea to spend this week in prayer.” I soon learned from his team that he spent much of his time alone in prayer, often sending for one or more of the team to join him for a period.

But this event blew me away: he said, speaking to 12,000 delegates who were together last year for a solid month in a cell church event they call “The Mountain of Moses,” where each day begins with 3 solid hours of prayer,

“I got so busy with the team preparing for this event I missed my prayer times. When I returned to meet with the Holy Spirit after those three days, He said to me, “Vladimir, I am glad you are back! I have missed you!”

Living among his team for weeks at a time has revealed their total focus on hearing the voice of God for the entire movement. Friday nights thousands of cell members gather to pray from 8 pm to 3 am. I spoke for an hour at one of those sessions and was deeply moved when at midnight, they packed up all the chairs against the walls so they could become one huge crowd, gathering with hands raised, praying aloud for the power to move in their midst. So precious are these sessions, so filled with His glorious presence, that the home cells are empowered for their weekly ministries to their unbelieving families.

We Americans have so much to learn from our Ukrainian brothers and sisters!

The True Meaning of the Church by Ralph Neighbour

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An excellent article by Ralph Neighbour about the true nature of the church
coaches_ralphNThe True Meaning of the Church

by Ralph Neighbour

When the average Christian hears the word “church” the immediate mental image is either a building or a large room in a religious structure with a platform and a preacher. Example: people say, “Are you going to church today?” This is a typical illegitimate use of the word. The question refers either to the building or the public gathering conducted there.

“Church” is not a Bible word. It comes from the German Kirk, defining a religious edifice. It is a bastard term birthed in the fourth century to define religious structures. Adolf Schlatter (1852–1938), Evangelical theologian and professor at Greifswald, Berlin and Tübingen, refused to use the term in any of his books, substituting “Community” for the word.

Jesus introduced the word ecclesia in Matthew 16 and then in chapter 18, used it for the second and last time. In the first reference, He described its mission: kicking down the gates of hell. In the second reference, he instructs how an ecclesia would deal with disputes between its members. Two members should settle issues together or invite a trusted third person into the negotiation. If that were to fail, it was to be presented to the ecclesia as the Supreme Court for a decision. The term ecclesia must refer to a community small enough for close fellowship to exist between all members.

That is why Christ’s body should be viewed “Cell” by “Cell.” Each is a basic Christian community where the intimacy Jesus described is present.

I had not earlier in my ministry grasped the size of “church” Jesus had in mind! How large could the gathering be Jesus used in Matthew to refer to ecclesia? It was obviously small enough for each member to be intimately connected with two persons in conflict.

I began to see that the 12 disciples were actually the prototype size for Jesus’ ecclesia. Twelve is approximately the number of people who can relate intimately to one another.
“Cell” defines the “Basic Christian Community,” the ecclesia, not the word “church.”

Jesus taught the ecclesia to “love (agape) one another.” 52 more times in the New Testament, we are called to consider how to connect to “one another.” The expression of dismembered body parts, sitting in rows, is described by the word “church.” The authentic “one another” life is found in the “cell.” The first word is cold, impersonal. The second word denotes what Paul called for in Philippians 2: “Look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

The biblical description of life together in the ecclesia demands an intimate family of God, not an impersonal assembly of God. The destruction done to the authentic ecclesia by the use of the word “church” to describe it is massive! Let us join Schlatter and refuse to use it!

From joelcomiskey.com