Concert of Prayer

What Is A "Concert of Prayer?"

The term "Concerts of Prayer" comes from the early 1700s, and has been used in subsequent generations to describe major prayer movements preceding new global advances of Christ's Kingdom. In The Eager Feet, Dr. J. Edwin Orr writes: "The Concert of Prayer for revival in the 1780s in Great Britain and in the 1790s in the United States, and the renewed Concert of Prayer in both countries…was clearly demonstrated to be the prime factor in motivating and equipping Christians for service in a world-wide movement which totally eclipsed the military might of the nations at the battle of Waterloo. As in the first half of the century (the early 1800s), practically every missionary vision (from 1858 onward) was launched by men revived in the awakenings in the sending churches."

Here's one example. A praying businessman, Jeremiah Lamphier started a noontime prayer meeting in 1857 in the Dutch Reformed Church consistory in Manhatten, New York. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of a population of one million showed up. But they weren't discouraged. The next week there were fourteen and then twenty-three. In a few months there were concerts of prayer in scores of U.S. cities. This was the beginning of a God-given prayer movement that became the sustaining foundation for the Great Awakening of the mid-1800's, reviving the Church and resulting in a worldwide missionary advance lasting over 100 years.

Today, God has convinced many that the body of Christ worldwide is on the verge of a wonderful new work of God that will transform their cities, as well as bring the Gospel to some of earth's unreached peoples. Thus, they can do nothing else but pray and call others to join them!

Historically speaking, the primary focus of Concerts has been on two major agendas: Christians prayed for Christ's fullness to be revealed in His Church to empower them to accomplish the task that was before them. They also prayed for the fulfillment of His saving purposes among the nations through an awakened, consecrated Church. The same two-fold agenda prevails today.

And so "Concerts of Prayer" helps describe Christians united on a regular basis to seek fullness and fulfillment. Extraordinary united prayer is not determined so much by how long one prays or how often but rather that Christians do pray, that they pray for those things most on God's heart, and that they do so together - "in concert."

How Does This Relate to World Evangelization?

Billions still wait to hear the Gospel. Most have no one like them near them to tell them. In addition, the immensity, complexity, and urgency of the challenge can create in many of us a paralysis of faith.

But in spiritual awakening God changes this. He brings us face to face with the Lordship of Christ. The Church rediscovers how fully Christ is Lord of heaven and earth. We also discover in new ways that He is the Lord of history, and that He is able to overcome all barriers to His Kingdom's advance. We view Him as Lord of His Church and Lord through His Church, able to empower us and work through us to fulfill His global cause. And we recognize how fully He is Lord of our own lives, able to work through our lives, without limits, to touch the very ends of the earth.

This discovery brings a decisive devotion to Jesus as Lord that releases us from paralysis of faith and forms the spiritual dynamic behind world evangelization.

At a meeting of world mission leaders, Dr. George Peters appealed, "We have become in missions so wrapped up in technology and methodology that we have forgotten that missions is number one the releasing of divine dynamics. Reaching the unreached will, first of all, mean for us not only to lay hold of it in faith, but to develop thousands and thousands of prayer cells in America and elsewhere that will commit themselves whole-heartedly to prayer until the victory will be won. We need spiritual mobilization."

What to pray

  • For God to be glorified throughout the earth, among all peoples everywhere. Tell Him you want this to happen and tell Him what it will mean to you personally when it does.
  • That God would receive greater praise in the earth for what He is presently doing in the Church, and especially for all he will do through the Church to reach, salvage and fulfill unreached peoples around the world.
  • That Christ's world mission of love and justice will prevail. It is a life or death issue. People without Christ everywhere lack any inheritance in God's kingdom and have no way to receive His salvation.
  • For churches to be planted within every people group on our planet within this generation.
  • For new thrusts in world evangelization through the intentional, sacrificial penetration of major human barriers world-wide.
  • For an awakened spiritual hunger among the billions (such as Muslims, Chinese, Hindus, Buddhists and secularists) who have yet to clearly learn of Christ. That they may have a new sense of the reality of God and an unavoidable desire to seek Him.
  • For Satan to be bound and fully routed within every nation; that Christ's victory on the cross would break Satan's hold on peoples and cultures.
  • For world leaders and governments, and for the outcome of world events. All of these can directly affect the free course of the Gospel within a nation and within a people group.
  • For major global issues which impinge on a world mission thrust. They are part of the moral darkness, which must be pressed back by the planting of responsible communities of disciples among the billions who have yet to hear. Such issues include: global hunger, nuclear proliferation, political and economic oppression, and terrorism.
  • For God's people everywhere to see those nearby whose ways of living differ from them enough to cut them off from the regular witness of the Gospel; for us to see them and reach out to them.
  • For specific people groups who are beyond the reach of the Gospel. Ask God to give to churches world-wide the wisdom to know how to reach them.
  • That God would raise up hundreds of thousands of new cross-cultural messengers of the Gospel to be sent out in a variety of roles, by churches around the world.
  • For those peoples and places where the doors are open for hundreds of more laborers to enter right now. That the doors would remain open and that the workers would soon be found to walk through them.
  • For all current efforts to research and formulate mission strategy, so as to effectively train and deploy a new generation of missionaries and self-supporting witnesses.
  • For God to raise up a new movement of "senders" world-wide people who know God has called them to send a new force of cross-cultural witnesses and who embrace that assignment with the same vision and sacrifices as those who go.

Suggested Format For A Two Hour Concert of Prayer

Following the pattern of concerts of prayer over the past 250 years, as well as prayer movements emerging nationwide and worldwide today, here is one model of a format for a two-hour Concert of Prayer. The approach provides not only a satisfying experience during a prayer concert, but can be adapted back in the churches, fellowships and ministries from which we come - so that the vision and ministry of united prayer may spread.

Here are title basic components for a Concert of Prayer:

  • Celebration
  • Dedication
  • Seeking Fullness
  • Testimonies
  • Preparation
  • Seeking Fulfillment
  • Grand Finale
  1. CELEBRATION (10 minutes)
    • Praise in hymns and choruses, focused on awakening and mission
    • Reports of God's answers to prayers offered up during previous Concerts
    • Prayers of praise for God's faithfulness, for His Kingdom, for His Son
  2. PREPARATION (20 minutes)
    • Welcome to the Concert
    • Overview: Why are we here?
    • Biblical perspectives on what we're praying toward (i.e. awakening, mission)
    • Preview of the format
    • Teaming-up in partners and in huddles
  3. DEDICATION (5 minutes)
    • Commitment: to be servants through prayer and to be used in answer to our prayers
    • Thanksgiving: for the privilege of united prayer and for those with whom we unite
    • Invitation for Christ to lead the Concert and to pray through us
    • Hymn of praise
  4. SEEKING FOR FULLNESS / AWAKENING IN THE CHURCH (30 minutes)
    • In partners - for personal revival
    • In huddles - for awakening in our local churches and ministries
    • As a whole - for awakening in the Church worldwide
    • Pause to listen to our Father
    • Chorus
  5. SEEKING FOR FULFILLMENT/MISSION AMONG THE NATIONS (30 minutes)
    • In partners - for personal ministries
    • In huddles - for outreach and mission in our city
    • As a whole - for world evangelization
    • Pause to listen to our Father
    • Chorus
  6. TESTIMOMES: WHAT HAS GOD SAID TO US HERE? (10 minutes)
    • On Fullness (awakening)
    • On Fulfillment (mission)
  7. GRAND FINALE (15 minutes)
    • Offering ourselves to be answers to our prayers and also to live accordingly
    • Prayer for God's empowerment in our own lives for ministry
    • Prayer for prayer movements locally and worldwide
    • 0ffering praise to the Father who will answer our Concert of Prayer
    • Leave to watch and serve "in concert"

"Must you go to China? How much nicer it would be to stay here and serve the Lord at home!" She made it plain at last that she would not go to China.

J. Hudson Taylor's new ex-girlfriend

You can do something other than working with God in His purpose, but it will always be something lesser, and you couldn't come up with something better.

Steve Hawthorne

I have seen, at different times, the smoke of a thousand villages villages whose people are without Christ, without God, and without hope in the world.

Robert Moffat

The command has been to "go," but we have stayed in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth... but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.

Robert Savage

While vast continents are shrouded in darkness... the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by God to keep you out of the foreign mission field.

Ion Keith-Falconer

I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China... I don't know who it was... It must have been a man... a well-educated man. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing... and God looked down... and saw Gladys Aylward... And God said "Well, she's willing."

Gladys Aylward

Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees.

J. Hudson Taylor

The man... looking at him with a smile that only half concealed his contempt, inquired, "Now Mr. Morrison do you really expect that you will make an impression on the idolatry of the Chinese Empire?" "No sir," said Morrison, "but I expect that God will."

Robert Morrison

Here am I. Send me.

Isaiah

And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives... and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.

Nate Saint

Jehovah Witnesses don't believe in hell and neither do most Christians.

Leonard Ravenhill

Had I cared for the comments of people, I should never have been a missionary.

C.T. Studd

Young man, sit down: when God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine.

said to a young William Carey

Oh, that I had a thousand lives, and a thousand bodies! All of them should be devoted to no other employment but to preach Christ to these degraded, despised, yet beloved mortals.

Robert Moffat

We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.

John Stott

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Jim Elliot

A tiny group of believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.

K.P. Yohannan

I have but one passion it is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.

Count Zinzindorf

God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies.

J. Hudson Taylor

He must increase, but I must decrease.

John the Baptist

If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.

C.T. Studd

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.

William Cameron Townsend

Prepare for the worst, expect the best, and take what comes.

Robert E. Speer

The saddest thing one meets is a nominal Christian. I had not seen it in Japan where missions is younger. The church here is a "field full of wheat and tares."

Amy Carmichael

I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third places and teaching the fourth.

James O. Fraser

It is just as proper, maybe even more so, to say Christ's global cause has a Church as to say Christ's Church has a global cause.

David Bryant

If you are sick, fast and pray; if the language is hard to learn, fast and pray; if the people will not hear you, fast and pray, if you have nothing to eat, fast and pray.

Frederick Franson

What are we here for, to have a good time with Christians or to save sinners?

Malla Moe

I tell you, brethren, if mercies and if judgments do not convert you, God has no other arrows in His quiver.

Robert Murray Mc'Cheyne

It's amazing what can be accomplished if you don't worry about who gets the credit.

Clarence W. Jones

Two distinguishing marks of the early church were: 1) Poverty 2) Power.

T.J. Bach

Do not think me mad. It is not to make money that I believe a Christian should live. The noblest thing a man can do is, just humbly to receive, and then go amongst others and give.

David Livingstone

From my many years' experience I can unhesitatingly say that the cross bears those who bear the cross.

Sadhu Sundar Singh

I pray that no missionary will ever be as lonely as I have been.

Lottie Moon

All my friends are but one, but He is all sufficient.

William Carey

How little chance the Holy Ghost has nowadays. The churches and missionary societies have so bound him in red tape that they practically ask Him to sit in a corner while they do the work themselves.

C.T. Studd

I have always believed that the Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he wanted to.

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

The more obstacles you have, the more opportunities there are for God to do something.

Clarence W. Jones

Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.

William Carey

God's part is to put forth power; our part is to put forth faith.

Andrew A. Bonar

All the resources of the Godhead are at our disposal!

Jonathan Goforth

I feel now, that Arabia could easily be evangelized within the next thirty years if it were not for the wicked selfishness of Christians.

Samuel Zwemer

The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.

E. Stanley Jones

This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Jesus

All roads lead to the judgment seat of Christ.

Keith Green

Obedience to the call of Christ nearly always costs everything to two people- the one who is called, and the one who loves that one.

Oswald Chambers

Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.

A.W. Tozer

I have said that there is nothing in the world or the Church, except it's disobedience, to render the evangelization of the world in this generation an impossibility.

Robert Speer

I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India might know there is one who cares.

Alexander Duff

Today Christians spend more money on dog food than missions.

Leonard Ravenhill

It will not do to say that you have no special call to go to China. With these facts before you and with the command of the Lord Jesus to go and preach the gospel to every creature, you need rather to ascertain whether you have a special call to stay at home.

J. Hudson Taylor

We talk of the second coming, half the world has never heard of the first.

Oswald J. Smith

God cannot lead you on the basis of facts that you do not know.

David Bryant

And thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named so that I would not build on another man's foundation.

Paul

Why do we insist on building the largest and most impressive structures in our city when people on the other side of town are hungry, jobless and worshipping in storefronts?

K.P. Yohannan

If every Christian is already considered a missionary, then all can stay put where they are, and nobody needs to get up and go anywhere to preach the gospel. But if our only concern is to witness where we are, how will people in unevangelized areas ever hear the gospel? The present uneven distribution of Christians and opportunities to hear the gospel of Christ will continue on unchanged.

C. Gordon Olson

I spent twenty years of my life trying to recruit people out of local churches and into missions structures so that they could be involved in fulfilling God's global mission. Now I have another idea. Let's take God's global mission and put it right in the middle of the local church!

George Miley

God provides the men and women needed for each generation.

Mildred Cable

Oh dear, I couldn't say that my church is alive and I wouldn't want to call it dead. I guess it's just walking in its sleep!

Church member

When he landed in 1848 there were no Christians here; when he left in 1872 there were no heathen.

said of John Geddie

I am ready to burn out for God. I am ready to endure any hardship, if by any means I might save some. The longing of my heart is to make known my glorious Redeemer to those who have never heard.

William Burns

At the moment I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer's love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss, till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself.

John G. Paton

Save others, snatching them out of the fire.

Jude

The evangelization of the world in this generation.

Student Volunteer Movement Motto

Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.

Jesus

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't.

John Piper

His authority on earth allows us to dare to go to all the nations. His authority in heaven gives us our only hope of success. And His presence with us leaves us no other choice.

John Stott

Today five out of six non-Christians in our world have no hope unless missionaries come to them and plant the church among them.

David Bryant

Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.

Francis Xavier

Christ for the students of the world, and the students of the world for Christ.

Luther Wishard

We who have Christ's eternal life need to throw away our own lives.

George Verwer

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of Hell.

C.T. Studd

When I get to China, I will have no claim on any one for anything. My claim will be alone in God and I must learn before I leave England to move men through God by prayer alone.

J. Hudson Taylor

God has huge plans for the world today! He is not content to merely establish a handful of struggling churches among each tongue, tribe and nation. Even now He is preparing and empowering His Church to carry the seeds of revival to the uttermost ends of the earth.

David Smithers

The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.

Mike Stachura

Answering a student's question, 'Will the heathen who have not heard the Gospel be saved?' thus, 'It is more a question with me whether we, who have the Gospel and fail to give it to those who have not, can be saved.'

C.H. Spurgeon.

There is something wonderfully misleading, full of hallucination and delusion in this business of missionary calls. With many of us it is not a missionary call at all that we are looking for; it is a shove. There are a great many of us who would never hear a call if it came.

Robert Speer

I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God; first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

J. Hudson Taylor

I love to live on the brink of eternity.

David Brainerd

The greatest tragedy to befall a person is to have sight but lack vision.

Helen Keller

'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters, and servants and masters not to come there. And then look Christ in the face, whose mercy you have professed to obey, and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish his mercy to the world.

William Booth

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you are alive, it isn't.

Richard Bach

If God has fit you to be a missionary, I would not have you shrivel down to be a king.

Charles H. Spurgeon

The world is my parish.

John Wesley

Why doesn't your God speak my language?

Guatemalan Indian to Cam Townsend, founder Wycliffe Bible Translators

I am willing to go anywhere, at anytime, to do anything for Jesus.

Luther Wishard

The 3.5 billion unreached people on earth would form a single file line that would stretch around the equator 25 times! Can you picture 25 lines of Christless people, trampling endlessly toward hell? Let that vision stay with you day and night.

Larry Stockstill

God does not have to come and tell me what I must do for Him, He brings me into a relationship with Himself where I hear His call and understand what He wants me to do, and I do it out of sheer love to Him... When people say they have had a call to foreign service, or to any particular sphere of work, they mean that their relationship to God has enabled them to realize what they can do for God.

Oswald Chambers

A little prayer, little power; no prayer, no power.

A Chinese Christian motto

When God's finger points, God's hand will open the door.

Clarence Jones

I will open Africa to the gospel or die trying.

Rowland Bingham

None but women can reach Muslim Women... So we have a solemn duty in this matter that we cannot shift. The blood of souls is on our skirts, and God will demand them at our hands.

Missionary wife from the Middle East

The church that does not evangelize will fossilize.

Oswald J. Smith

As long as there are millions destitute of the word of God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ, it will be impossible for me to devote my time and energy to those who have both.

J.L. Ewen

If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to hell over our bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees, imploring them to stay. If hell must be filled, at least let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go there unwarned and unprayed for.

Charles Spurgeon

We have a God who delights in impossibilities.

Andrew Murray

Why do you need a voice when you have a verse.

Jim Elliot

The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.

Samuel Zwemer

IT Summer Project