Dec. 28, 2009

by Julie Price

Carrie Wilkens, River Hills member, posts a prayer request on the prayer wall, used as part of a process to discover a relevant practice of evangelism. Photo by Dona Hagstrom

This fall, newcomers to River Hills United Methodist Church in Burnsville noticed an unusual aspect of the church while hanging up their coats. One half of the coat room is a prayer wall, covered with sticky notes containing prayer requests. They were also given a book and invited to join a small group, one of the fourteen that were studying the book and its process of prayer as a gateway to joyful, effective evangelism.

That’s not all.

“Newcomers can sense a vibrancy, an excitement that they would not have experienced a few short months ago,” says Rev. Duane Sarazin, lead pastor at River Hills. “We hear people talking more about their faith, sharing their faith, and getting excited about it.”

The cause of all these changes? A congregation-wide “E-vent” based on the book Unbinding Your Heart: 40 Days of Prayer and Faith Sharing, by Martha Grace Reese (Chalice Press, 2008). Not just another evangelism program, this book aims to change the culture of the congregation and help its members create new habits that both reach new people and cultivate spiritual vitality.

The process is called an “E-vent” because in many mainline churches, evangelism is the “E-word”—unspoken and “horrifying,” says Martha Grace Reese.

Reese identifies three reasons that mainline church members shy away from evangelism. First, they don’t want to be associated with “obnoxious and ineffective” evangelism tactics, such as those practiced by some notorious televangelists. Second, church members fell out of the practice of telling their faith stories, so many people who have grown up in churches have never heard fellow church members relate how they came to faith. Third, many seminaries stopped offering evangelism courses. (The United Methodist Church requires evangelism coursework of those seeking ordination.)

“This is the best resource I’ve discovered in my ministry that isn’t a program. It’s a process that you work with the church,” says Sarazin. “It says, essentially: start with prayer, ask God where the church is to go and God will show you. Continuing with prayer, start sharing your faith stories, first with your friends at church. As you keep doing it, pretty soon they’ll flow out naturally when you’re having lunch with your colleagues at work and they ask you about your pen with the cross and flame on it.”

River Hills embarked upon the process on Oct. 8, when they launched what became a monthly prayer vigil. The sanctuary was open all day for people to offer their prayers in a candle-lit setting.

Oct. 18 began the 40-day process specified in the book. During the next six weeks, over 300 people studied Reese’s book, mostly in small groups.

“Any existing group, from youth Sunday-school classes to the Tuesday morning Bible study, stayed together for the study,” says Allan Moore, lay coordinator of the E-vent. Other groups were formed specifically for the E-vent.

The book consists of six chapters, each ending with discussion questions and exercises. Group members read a chapter each week before they met. “The exercises were designed to get you thinking and talking about your faith, your prayer life, your relationship with God, and what it means,” says Moore. “It’s very steeped in prayer, in looking at your own personal relationship with God and what it means to you.”

Prayer is a significant component for every aspect of the church, says Sarazin. “We’re starting to create a culture that recognizes we’re a body of Christ and prayer is important. I want to see us change the way we do committee work. Every church committee should devote one quarter of their meeting time for prayer. We need to ask God what we should be doing. I’ve sensed that these committees are starting to get it. I hear people tell me, ‘This is important and our whole evening goes better when we do it.’”

Not surprisingly, the unified, focused effort on prayer and the sharing of faith stories has influenced the church in a variety of positive ways.

“You know who a lot of people [at church] are, but you don’t really know them at a spiritual level,” says Moore. “People appreciated learning more about each other on a personal level, about where we are spiritually.”

“People said, ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever prayed out loud for somebody,’” says Sarazin, referencing the one-on-one prayers prescribed at the beginning of each small-group session. “They said it was a powerful time, to have us all on the same page in our daily prayer journals.”

To help the congregation ease into evangelism, E-vent oriented church activities are being planned, such as a Sunday afternoon Christmas cantata performance held in December. “These create an opportunity—one of the 10,000 doors we talk about [in the denomination’s Rethink Church emphasis]—for members to invite their friends to church,” says Sarazin. “They enjoy refreshments, see the building, listen to the music. It’s not threatening; it’s not a worship service.”

The E-vent will continue beyond the original 40 days and into 2010, when the church begins to study Reese’s fourth book, Unbinding Your Soul: Your Experiment in Prayer and Community (Chalice Press, 2009). The focus of this book takes the process begun in Unbinding Your Heart and moves it a step farther to help members engage in talking to their friends about their faith. Like Unbinding Your Heart, it has a prayer journal, small group study sessions, and action steps for individuals.

Despite the use of these prepared materials, Moore warns, “It’s important to follow the process. Don’t shortcut it—spend the time planning. If you’re going to be serious about it, think of it as a long-term process. It’s a cultural change.”

Julie Price is communications assistant for the Minnesota Annual Conference.