Gradon Harvey, a good friend of mine that I’m about to embark on working with to help some Corps (churches) within the Central Division of The Salvation Army, recently posted an article on North South Aotearoa that I’d like to also share here.
The aim of North South Aotearoa is to practically, systematically and biblically mobilise the Church in Aotearoa (New Zealand).
Their desire is to stimulate the church body of Aotearoa to look at fresh ways of developing mission plans, to reach out to their local communities and to engage with the wide range of cultures that make up our ever-changing society.
Gradon writes:
There is a lot of discouragement out there in Churches. You could probably tell me stories worse than the ones I have heard! I have been networking with several groups of pastors over the past month and realised the situation is quite dire.
For a while, I had been localising the problems of the church I’m leading, with its smaller turnout of families, and a smaller number at youth and kids groups as unique to us. However, I have come to realise that my experience is common in a lot of churches.
How discouraging it has been for pastors who have shared, of doing exit interviews of people who they thought were friends, sometimes leaving over the position a church had taken over Covid.
Many had good children and youth leaders in place but are finding that small numbers are now coming. A drop in finances was a common problem, as well as a drop-off of volunteers with one church struggling to get those who had gone into house groups, back into corporate worship. Even big churches were struggling with the pain around exit interviews and volunteers.
With all the recent negative publicity via the press and social media that has been thrown at the church in NZ, we are no longer seen as the answer to life’s problems but one of the causes. Some Christian groups in institutions like universities are being banned as hate groups. We are in reality grappling as a church that is losing our place in society.
So what could be a solution to the problems facing the church?
I have been doing some thinking that what we are facing is a more extreme version (because of the impact of Covid) of what happened back in the 1990s. Another time of discouragement with people exiting the ministry and churches closing their doors.
During this time of discouragement, we heard of community transformations around the world beginning to happen.
It’s like these church communities rose in anger at the spiritual forces that were attacking the church and their society. They found powerful changes began to happen as the church rose in prayer. These stories inspired the NZ church into action.
In my community, on the Kapiti Coast, in the 1990s, there was also a time of discouragement. During this time we partnered with two local Maori Christian kamātua and with them we had large groups who prayer walked our boundaries, almost all the local pastors visited Kapiti Island (where horrible things had happened to captured slaves), and on the top of the hill with one of the kamātua, we prayed for forgiveness for our community, celebrated Holy Communion and poured out the communion wine left over, symbolically to cleanse the land.
Then came the Toronto Blessing into many churches. There was amazing unity until it seemed that the pull of our denominations caused us to preferentially invest our time with them.
At least that’s my opinion of how I believe it became undone!
My proposition, as a possible solution is to look at how a discouraged church in the 1990s began operating in the opposite spirit of their age in different places around the world. Perhaps we might take the lessons learned, as ways forward that might be applied or adapted to our age.
George Otis Junior (and his Sentinel Group) tracked 800 powerful moves of God in communities in the 1990s that he looked at and found that there were five commonalities found in 100% of these moves of God, where they all experience some kind of community transformation.
There was persevering leadership in discouraging times
(refer to 1 Timothy 6:11-16 and Acts 14:22)
Reconciliation between Christian Communities, and the church and its community (John 17:11-15).
Renewal of the priority of intercession. Prayer rooms and nights of prayer etc. (2 Chronicles 7:14 and Jeremiah 29:13)
Diagnostic research looked at the injustice or spiritual foolishness of our forefathers. Then looked at how reconciliation could happen, or at the very least, prayerful repentance on behalf of churches.
Most Christians have no idea of the spiritual history of their communities or grievances that exist between us and iwi. I once asked a local iwi leader if there were any outstanding grievances between my previous church (which had existed in some way in Kapiti, since the 1840s) and was shocked by his negative response.
Public power encounters (Matthew 18:18-20 and Acts 19:11-12) where communities pray against the obvious idols and/or sins of their forefathers. If the police statistics in NZ say 41% of their time is spent on Family Harm and that we have one of the highest youth suicide rates in the OECD – that indicates we have a spiritual problem that needs battling with to see our community transformed for example (Ephesians 6:10 -18)
If you are interested in pursuing this idea of learning from the past, click here for a move of God that happened in the 1990s in the Arctic community of Pond Inlet, complete with a tape recording of the noise that exploded in the church when the Holy Spirit came.
Secondly, listen to a recent update by George Otis Junior about transformational prayer.
Researching YouTube stories from George Otis Junior or his Sentinel group you will find some very encouraging stories about the moves of God that he has documented over the 1990s.
To close on an encouraging note, over Queens Birthday weekend, my church (Raumati Beach Church) had a night of prayer, praying from 7pm on Saturday until 9am on Sunday in two-hour periods. We had an amazing buy-in with about 2/3rds of the congregation involved. What I worked out was that many believers were aware that our response to all the spiritual discouragement out there, was to rise in prayer to change the spiritual atmosphere. It was so encouraging!
I think the Church Mobilisations Journeys (click here for more information) sessions that I have been leading in churches around New Zealand, can easily be adapted to helping church leaders do the thinking/praying of how to get refocused now after the lockdown.
If the above could be helpful in your setting then contact me and I’ll get back to you – our prayer for you all, is that the Church leaders of New Zealand would rise up and see a new move of God in this land.
Gradon Harvey has been a minister for 40 years. His last appointment was for 17 years as a senior pastor in a town of 10,000. He also led a short-term agency during this time that mobilised 1,000 people into short-term mission.
Most recently, he spent 6 years serving as Executive Director of an international missions’ organization. He has worked in 40 different countries with various mission organisations- including 3 years of church planting in South America. He is currently the National Director of North.South Aotearoa and committed member and part-time Interregnum Director of Raumati Beach Church.
Today is the sixth day of the week-long Global Ecumenical Call to Prayer for COVID which has been organised by a group made up of the World Council of Churches, World Vision International, The World Evangelical Alliance and the Mennonite World Conference – MWC CMM, and the purpose of the venture is to raise awareness of the implications of the pandemic for communities everywhere and to encourage and resource prayers from Christians of all faith traditions.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope, comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.”
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, 
T
Today’s Scripture Reading comes from 
The life and times of Perry... 