FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) — Youth pastors are joining in to pray for revival and spiritual awakening.
Sparked by plans for a senior pastor prayer meeting Sept. 30–Oct. 1 in Southlake, Texas, two student ministry professors and a local church youth pastor have begun organizing a simultaneous prayer event for youth pastors at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.
“I believe the church in America needs a mighty move of God, and I believe it starts with prayer,” said Johnny Derouen of Southwestern Seminary and one of the youth prayer meeting’s organizers along with professor Richard Ross and Arkansas youth pastor Keith Harmon.
“We just sensed the need to pray simultaneously alongside our senior pastors. We want to support our pastors in this 24-hour prayer event. We are encouraging student pastors all over America and the world who cannot join us in Texas to pray simultaneously with us wherever they are,” Harmon said.
Ronnie Floyd of Cross Church in northwest Arkansas and the group of fellow senior pastors have banded together to hold the senior pastor’s prayer meeting from a conviction about dedicated and persistent prayer and the role it can play in the revival for which they are praying.
“When we saw pastor Ronnie Floyd’s invitation for senior pastors to gather to pray toward revival, it immediately caught our attention,” Ross said. “Concerted prayer among pastors has preceded most great revivals. But a second thought soon came to mind. If young people may again be at the tip of the spear of revival, then shouldn’t those who directly lead them gather to pray in that direction?”
“This is not a ‘come and go’ event or a place to ‘come and be seen’; nor is it a denominational or political meeting,” Floyd wrote in an Aug. 14 blog titled “Call to Pray,” which can be read in full at www.ronniefloyd.com. “It is a serious spiritual experience of prayer with pastors nationally.” Keith Harmon, one of the organizers for the youth prayer sessions, is Cross Church’s youth pastor.
Both prayer meetings come in the same year when SBC Executive Committee President Frank Page has called the convention to pray with renewed fervor for revival and spiritual awakening throughout America and in which SBC President Fred Luter made prayer and revival the theme of the 2013 SBC annual meeting.
The prayer meetings will be held from 6:30 p.m. Sept. 30 to noon on Oct. 1 in Southlake and in Fort Worth. The youth pastor prayer meeting will be held in Price Hall on the seminary campus, and organizers ask that those planning to attend register by emailing [email protected] or [email protected]. For more information on the youth pastor gathering, go to www.youthleaderprayer.com. Pastors wanting to register for the senior pastor prayer gathering can do so at www.ronniefloyd.com/blog/5392/pastors/a-call-to-pray. Southwestern will offer free transportation by reservation only from Southlake to the seminary in Fort Worth, for those youth pastors who travel to Southlake with their senior pastor.
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Sharayah Colter is a newswriter for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas (www.swbts.edu/campusnews). Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).
