Do You Want the Church to Grow?

 By Pastor Benjamin Glaser - Posted at Thoughts From Parson Farms:

Understanding Prayer's Role in Winning Souls For the Kingdom

Good Morning,

Today for our look at the Directory of Public Worship we are going to be talking about the work of the gospel in converting sinners in and through the pastoral prayer. It is an element of our corporate calling out to God in the service of Christ through the minister’s meditation whereby we testify to our desire that there be more believers tomorrow than there are today. It seems like a captain obvious moment to want that. However, a church should have a hope of spiritual work in all that they do, and that especially goes for the pastoral prayer. We’ve talked before about how as the preacher prays at this moment in the worship service he’s speaking for the whole congregation as one. A church should want to grow, and to grow in such a way that men and women who have never previously heard the gospel message might do so and then blessedly through the preaching of the word and the fellowship of the saints be at rest in Jesus.

Below’s selection from the DPW will help us think through how best to do this and provide for us some reasons as to why we should not only be praying for this every week in the pastoral prayer, but how us as individual Christians must needs be supporting the labors of the minister as he pleads to God for the power of the Holy Spirit to break through the hearts of men.

Read here:

To pray for the propagation of the gospel and kingdom of Christ to all nations; for the conversion of the Jews, the fulness of the Gentiles, the fall of Antichrist, and the hastening of the second coming of our Lord; for the deliverance of the distressed churches abroad from the tyranny of the antichristian faction, and from the cruel oppressions and blasphemies of the Turk; for the blessing of God upon the reformed churches, especially upon the churches and kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, now more strictly and religiously united in the Solemn National League and Covenant; and for our plantations in the remote parts of the world: more particularly for that church and kingdom whereof we are members, that therein God would establish peace and truth , the purity of all his ordinances, and the power of godliness; prevent and remove heresy, schism, profaneness, superstition, security, and unfruitfulness under the means of grace; heal all our rents and divisions, and preserve us from breach of our Solemn Covenant.

Continue here.