Elevation church is joining up with over 1300 other churches this month for an event called One Prayer. I am trying hard to wrap my mind around this concept as it is slowly being unveiled to us by our leadership. The problem is that while Pastor Furtick usually does an excellent job of explaining things that we are involved in or are partnering for, I really feel like the ball has been dropped on this one. You see, this One Prayer thing is so much bigger than they have been telling us and I have had to do some research to understand it more. The long and the short of it is that the Church (notice the capital C) is coming together in a way heretofore unthinkable through the use of modern technology. In the past several months 65 pastors have filmed sermons under this premise:

"If God would answer 'one prayer' for the Church at large, what would you pray?"

And now LifeChurch.tv is using their online resources to make all 65 sermons available to the 1300 churches worldwide that have signed up - free of cost. During the month of June the churches are to pick 3-4 of the sermons to show to their congregation. But, and this is where it gets really cool and where I consequently felt a little left out in the dark, then something else happens (from One Prayer's site):

And now for the action: week three, each participating church takes a special offering. The combined money goes to four international organizations that work locally to build 500 new churches where building churches is particularly tough: Sudan, India, China, and Cambodia.

On week four, clusters of local churches will work together in community projects. The idea can go on a long time but the bulk of the idea will surge through four weekends in June.

This is incredible. Did you read the list of places that this initiative is attempting to go? It is easy to breeze through that list and not take note of the extreme difficulty that is represented with those four countries. Amazing. We found out at Elevation yesterday that 10 percent of our tithe from this month is going directly to this church plant initiative. Amazing. This is why I love my church.

Pastor pointed out something great yesterday - something that made Em and I turn to one another. In dealing with Acts 2 and the comments on speaking in tongues he made and observation to this effect: the tongues came about in order to unify everyone that came from very diverse backgrounds for the purpose of the gospel being spread. The goal of speaking "in tongues" was unity - but for so long all "speaking in tongues" has done is torn the Church apart into smaller churches. What One Prayer is attempting to do is be a cross-denominational approach that will bring the original focus back in - unity for the sake of the gospel.

So, in the spirit of the conversation at One Prayer - what would your One Prayer be for the church? Mine would be that we be more active with the knowledge that we have.