Greetings! Week three of the Dakotas-Minnesota Area Dynamite Prayer Initiative begins this Sunday, Jan. 28. We hope you are joining us in reading one chapter each day from the “Dynamite Prayer” book by Rev. Dr. Rosario “Roz” Picardo and Rev. Sue Nilson Kibbey, and if you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late. Below are some resources to help you infuse prayer into the life of your congregation over the remainder of this 28-day period.

Resources

Use these resources on your social media channels each day, in worship each week, or in some other unique way to engage your congregation in this initiative. Access resources for all four weeks.

Prayer Graphics: These square images contain the breakthrough prayers listed in chapters 15-21 of the book. Another folder contains images with thought-provoking lines from those chapters.

Prayer Videos: Each vertical video features someone reciting a breakthrough prayer listed in chapters 15-21 of the book.

Additional Resources: The Dynamite Prayer website also has some excellent downloadable graphics and videos that you are welcome to use as you wish.

Great Ideas

(Photo courtesy of Gace UMC in Burnsville, Minnesota.)

Grace UMC in Burnsville, Minnesota, is one congregation participating in the Dynamite Prayer Initiative. Here is how that church is incorporating breakthrough prayer throughout the 28 days (feel free to borrow these ideas!):

• Members of the congregation are meeting at a local coffee shop every Wednesday morning for “Coffee Break Breakthrough.” They discuss the book, talk about prayer, and name what or who needs prayer in their community.
• People from the church have been assigned prayer partners to check in with daily, and to encourage connection and accountability. 
• Each week in worship, the congregation together recites a breakthrough prayer; it is a revised version of the Wesleyan Covenant Prayer, translated for a post-Christian culture and written by Rev. Jeremy Smith.
• On the Sunday immediately following the 28 days, some people who participated in the “Coffee Break Breakthrough” will share a highlight of what emerged for them during this experiment and how they perceive the Holy Spirit moving Grace UMC next.
• One Sunday during worship, each person will be invited to write their prayer concern on a square. Everyone will learn how use the square to make a paper airplane, and the congregation will together fly their prayers up to God. Each person will take home a plane created by someone else and pray for the specific concern listed on it throughout the next week. (This is an idea borrowed from Rev. Brenda North at Glendale UMC in Savage, Minnesota.)

Impact Story

“If you are tired of praying the same kinds of prayers or stuck in your prayer life, join us for Dynamite Prayer.” That's the message Rev. Gordon Deuel conveyed to the congregation he leads: Crossroads Church—Elko New Market in Minnesota. He presented the book as a tool to help people go deeper in their prayer life, and he was pleasantly surprised by the response. “It wasn’t my typical prayer warriors that really wanted a copy of the book,” he said. “I had general, everyday, even relatively new congregant members that said ‘yeah, I want that.’” Crossroads is doing a sermon series on prayer throughout the 28 days, and has been posting prayers from the book on the church social media page every day. Two notable things that have happened recently that Deuel attributes, at least in part, to the focus on prayer and discipling people in new ways.

• At a recent Wednesday night gathering, part of the children's lesson involved asking kids if anyone wanted a deeper relationship with Jesus. Every single child present, including some who aren’t part of the church and don't practice the Christian faith, indicated a desire for just that.
• Last Sunday, there were 65 people in worship—and 44 of them responded to an invitation from Revs. Gordon and Melissa Deuel to join them at their home for lunch afterward.

Reflection: A Clear Demonstration of the Spirit's Power

My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. —1 Corinthians 2:4-5, NIV

I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, which I consider one of the world’s most beautiful cities. I also grew up in the shadow of a truly evil system called Apartheid. My father was a Methodist pastor, who grieved at how the inhumanity of this system of white oppression of black people had shaped his beloved Methodist Church.

While claiming to be “one and undivided,” we too were racially divided, with white pastors receiving better benefits, and better opportunities than their black colleagues. No amount of preaching and skilled debate could shift the opinion of those who met in Methodist Conference. It was at a point of despair and weakness that many Methodist people met together in a conference called “Obedience 81.”

This was a place to confess our own inability to change, and a time of prayer for the Spirit of God to step into the life of our church. And the impact was remarkable. The dunamis power of God stepped in and enabled the Methodist Church of Southern Africa to share our resources equally, and to choose black bishops and senior leaders.

You see, when the dunamis of God is set loose, our faith no longer rests on human wisdom and clever strategy—but is instead an opportunity for the demonstration of the Spirit’s power to banish the shadows and bring in the sunlight of the love of God. I bear witness that the power of the Spirit can soften stubborn hearts and change intransigent systems of power. Let us pray that it be so.      
 
Pastor Pete Grassow
First UMC
Brookings, South Dakota