Surviving and Thriving in Corporate Prayer - Part 1

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.” Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him. Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners. Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”

Mark 14:32-42

We’re familiar with the story

Jesus before being arrested goes to pray in Gethsemane – a place where he was known to frequently come (John 18:2) which is why it was convenient for Judas to catch him there

It’s the eve of his crucifixion and he desperately needs to commune with the Father.

On this night he takes the inner circle of his disciples – Peter, James and John – with him to the garden leaving the other eight off somewhere at a distance and then he brings them near and leaves them instructions to watch while he goes off a little further to pray.

Three times the trio are admonished to watch and/or pray while Jesus struggles in the garden and three times the disciples find that they aren’t up to the task.  James and John disappoint Jesus with their inability to persevere with him, but Jesus’ hardest words are reserved for Peter.

“Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep?

You see – despite what it is called in every Bible you’ve ever looked through – the Gospel of Mark is Peter’s Gospel. Tradition holds that after Paul and Barnabas split up and John Mark did a stint of ministry with the son of encouragement – he found his way into Peter’s company. And it is there that Peter recounted to his young apprentice all the stories off his time with Jesus. Telling Mark of all the miracles he performed and the things that he said.

The Gospel of Mark, like Matthew, Luke and John, is all about Jesus – but it’s Jesus from Peter’s perspective. We get more of Peter than anywhere else in the Gospels – at many times in Mark it’s like we’re listening to an aged apostle recounting the amazing story of how he met the God of the universe as a well intentioned but bumbling and blustery young man desperately in need of seasoning and wisdom. And it is in the Gospel of Mark that we get one of the most palpable expressions of Peter’s failure.

Just verses earlier Peter was in full bravado mode when he insisted, “Even if everyone else abandons you, I will not.”

And when Jesus rebukes his bluster with a sombre warning Peter ratchets up the rhetoric: “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.”

But we know how the story goes.

That night, like every night – as dawn approached the rooster did what God designed him to do – and as he crowed for the third time he announced not the dawn of a new day – but the defeat of a disciple.  Peter – who had been so assured of his own invincibility in conviction – was defeated by his own misplaced confidence.

So assured of his call, so confident of his importance, so comfortable with his role, so complacent in discipline, so ruined by his shame – let me frighten you here this morning brothers and sisters – if we are not careful, this could be our story too.

This is part 6 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer” (Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed) and today we begin a discussion on surviving and thriving in corporate prayer. How do we move from being a church that survives in prayer to a church that thrives in prayer? How do we take that which is supposed to be at the centre of the church’s life and practice and restore it to its rightful place before the rooster crows three times and we find ourselves ruined and disgraced? How can we avoid a similar fall and what does corporate prayer have to do with the story of Peter or Jesus in the Garden? This is where we must go next.

Technically corporate prayer occurs anytime at least 2 or 3 people are gathered in Jesus name and pray in agreement about something. It occurs around a dinner table when a family bows their head to give thanks for a meal, it happens at a board meeting when someone prays to open the proceedings, it happens in the worship service whenever we pray for the offering or each other, or the service itself. It happens in Sunday school classes, small groups and Bible studies. Corporate prayer happens at worship practices, and before church events – all of these expressions of unity in prayer before the Father, through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit are technically corporate prayer.

But I’m sure that you can pick up by the tone of this blog that I’m not interested in technicalities here – I’m interested in talking about a very specific expression of corporate prayer – one that I will go so far as to say is the solemn responsibility of the church. All those other expressions of corporate prayer are important; they constitute what I would identify as survival prayer. They keep the church alive, without those expressions of corporate prayer happening in our congregation this church that we now call The Bridge Church would not have been able to celebrate it’s 90^th anniversary this year. Those expressions of corporate prayer provide the buoyancy to keep this church afloat – but what I’m talking about this morning is the type of corporate prayer that does more than keep us above the waterline – I’m talking about prayer as a means of propulsion.

Prayer that drives the church forward into God’s will.

Prayer that takes us places.

Prayer that gives us purpose.

I’m talking not about surviving in corporate prayer, but thriving in corporate prayer. And for that there is only one way that I know of – the congregational corporate prayer meeting.

When I was hired as the pastor of The Bridge Church last year, one of the things that you called me to come and be for you is a pastor who leads the people of the church into a deeper experience of corporate prayer. Since that time I have been playing things safe and smart by not rocking the boat too much and instead coming alongside and supporting the pre-existing activities that pertained to this goal. But now that I’m into my second year in this pastorate things are going to have to change.  It’s no longer good enough to have an average of ten people gathering once a month for Acts 2 prayer, and to have the same four people gathering together each week to constitute our two other prayer gatherings (in case you were unaware because we don’t talk about them much I’m referring to the pre-service prayer upstairs in the library on Sunday mornings, and the Bridge of Hope prayer group that meets Tuesday mornings at the church). We need to grow into becoming a congregation that does more than the absolute bare minimum (not that I honestly think we are even clearing that bar) and that instead understands what it means to thrive in corporate prayer.

And I think that if we continue examining the scriptures we will discover in broad strokes just what a thriving church looks like. In the next post we will examine the pattern of the first Christians with regards to prayer and consider what the subsequent implications for the church should be as we plan our activities and involvement around this priority.