It’s growing! It can’t be stopped. More and more individuals and churches are engaging. There’s a movement of the Holy Spirit calling us to prayer.
A year ago, at Pentecost, we came together as a global church to pray. Thousands engaged. For some, the experience ignited something and for others it fueled what was already happening. In many places, with many individuals and churches, there was a growing sense of a need to pray. Pentecost occurred before COVID-19, but in some ways, its impact was prolonged by the pandemic. There was a desperation to see God move. There was a sense that we needed to go deeper. There were many people awakened to be committed disciples involved in discipling others. There was a hunger to see God move to open closed doors, for breakthrough witness to see lives transformed.
Those with a growing passion for prayer were joined by others. Beginning with a few churches that had been seized by a vision for prayer, more were added throughout North America and literally around the world. Prayer meetings lasted for hours, some overnight. People began to fast and pray. There was an increasing awareness among disciples of Christ that more people needed to be mobilized for the mission as marketplace multipliers or missionaries or ministers — and the momentum just keeps growing!
These realities are what the TOGETHER event is all about this year. We find ourselves again coming together to experience prayer amidst a focus of the Holy Spirit’s work to fill and send. The first Pentecost (Acts 2) commenced the filling of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. Pentecost supplied what the disciples lacked in their own strength. The coming of the Holy Spirit enabled those first believers — many of them from the city of Jerusalem — but many of them from everywhere around the world, to go out from Jerusalem to everywhere they belonged and beyond to share the good news. Churches were born. Disciples made disciples. The number of believers multiplied.
This work is not finished. Four out of every 10 people have no access to the gospel in their community. There is a growing secularization of our society in North America and doors seem to be closing or have already closed to the gospel in some of the most populated and unreached areas of this world. Strategy will not be enough. Good intentions or desires will not be enough. It will take a movement of prayer resulting in mobilizing workers— filled and sent.
So again, The International Wesleyan Church will join TOGETHER on Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2021, to ask God to move in even more powerful ways. We will focus on five themes in prayer amid worship and testimonies from around the world.
- Holy Spirit, fill and lead me
- Use me for breakthrough witness
- The calling of workers —ministers, missionaries and marketplace multipliers
- Disciples making disciples
- Churches multiplied
There will be a specific invitation for people to respond to take a next step in becoming ministers, missionaries and marketplace multipliers everywhere to everywhere. We’re asking the Holy Spirit to do a new work so that we might be filled and sent in our neighborhoods, our communities, in every ZIP code and every divisional area around the world.
We encourage you to join the TOGETHER experience individually, as a small group, as a church, at either 7:00 a.m. or 7:00 p.m. (ET) with people from every continent and a hundred nations.
Be a part of the testimonies shared and the prayers that are prayed. Plan to jump into the chat and be a part of the movement of prayer. Ask God now if he’s calling you to a deeper commitment to be filled and sent for him.
We can’t wait to be together!
RSVP now for TOGETHER on Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2021.
Dr. Dennis Jackson is executive director of Global Partners, which gives global focus to the mission of The Wesleyan Church.
