Assessment: SUSTAINED MOVEMENT
​ By the time a movement has reached this stage, there is hopefully already a large and steadfast group of intercessors, both internal and external, supporting the movement in prayer. In community with local leaders within the movement, we should be seeking the Lord about how to continue to deepen prayer, listening, and intercession within the movement. As the movement continues to look outward more intentionally beyond its own boundaries (geographic, social, or ethnolinguistic), the movement must also be trained to extend itself in prayer for other people groups, as well as to go deeper in prayer and fasting, all while continuing to train new believers and house churches in devotional prayer, listening prayer, personal and communal discernment, and abiding as our first and foundational act of love for God.
​ Disciples, churches, streams and movements have prayer rhythms by this point – how can they learn from the rhythms and practices of others in their movement and in other movements? How can strengths in different streams be shared with others who can learn from them? How can we help this movement increase their vision for those outside their current sphere as they come full members in working to see Revelation 7:9-10 come to fruition?
Prayer Priorities for this Stage:
- Pray for God to continue to grow strong leadership in every new generation and pray against any slow generational degradation
- Pray for God to create stronger economic sustainability in the movement in their ongoing coaching and training efforts and in their outreach to new peoples and places
- If the Bible is not available in all the heart languages impacted by the movement, pray that they can get the help they need to translate the Bible into those languages
- Pray that the disciples and leaders at all levels would be aware of the schemes of the evil one
- Pray against any jealousy and disunity among leaders
- Pray that outside groups will not disrupt the DNA with offers of funding and teaching
- Pray and listen around how God would have us ask for the next stage of this movement work
- Pray and listen around borders, boundaries, and the "undiscovered country" that he would lead this movement to engage in the coming season
- Continue to pray into the long term health, sustainability, and leadership structures of the movement
- Continue to pray for more apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to emerge on the fringes of the movement, and pray that these leaders will be thrust out into new places and among new people to start more kingdom movements
- Pray and listen around how God wants to stretch us and the movement leaders - where have we grown complacent, and to what growth frontier (internal or external) is God calling us?
Assessment: SUSTAINED MOVEMENT
The point of the following questions is simply to help assess your level of engagement in strategic prayer in your stage of movement work, and to help create awareness of how else you might invest in the critical work of prayer and intercession. Our hope is that this tool will provoke more questions, encourage you to dig into the resources to follow, and to reach out to others for more input and coaching.
- What are the strengths we are seeing in the movement? How can we pray into those strengths more effectively and more regularly? How can we pray for and help people with these strengths help those who need to be strengthened in those areas? How can we turn these things into more prayer fodder for our prayer networks?
- What are the weaknesses we are seeing in different disciples, churches, leaders and streams? How can we pray into and biblically address them? To what degree are we aware of what the Lord might be communicating about these gaps? To what degree are we aware of how God might have us make adjustments to avoid and/or overcome these weaknesses in the future?
- To what degree is there a growing awareness and desire within the movement to bring the gospel outside the natural relational, cultural and linguistic spheres into new peoples and places that are from different backgrounds? To what degree are we praying about how to cultivate that desire within leaders and house churches?
- To what degree are we praying against jealousy and rivalry among leaders within the movement? What might God want to speak to us about these things?
- To what degree are we praying into the 5 fold gifting of Ephesians 4 within the movement, that it would be expressed and synergized throughout the movement?
- To what degree are we sowing in praying into all the gifts of the body being expressed, honored and synergized throughout the movement? What might the Lord want to highlight about this area?