The Convergence of Prayer and Missions Movements
By Dr. Jason Hubbard
What will it take to see the Great Commission fulfilled in our generation?
In 2033, we will mark the 2,000th anniversary of the Great Commission and the birthday of the Church. The good news is that we are seeing gospel movements exploding across the earth!
We are also seeing the convergence of the prayer movements and missions movements. Since COVID began, we have seen millions of believers committed in united prayer, from Indonesia to South Africa, from India to Brazil, from North Africa to the Middle East—all asking the Father to give His Son the nations as His inheritance (Ps. 2:8)!
One of the largest house church networks reported that during this same season they have grown from two million house churches to close to three million, adding 20 million new Jesus followers over the last few years!
However, the remaining task of the fulfillment of the Great Commission is massive. Even after 2,000 years of Church history, today 80 percent of Muslims do not know a single Christian, and 1,708 people groups are yet to have a Bible in their own language. If we continue to do what we have been doing, 500 million Chinese may never have a chance to hear the good news of Jesus.
According to the Joshua Project, of the 100 largest remaining unreached people groups (less than one percent Christian), 1.8 billion people are yet to be reached with the gospel, with the vast majority in India/South Asia.
Plead Desperately
Jesus shared this tension with His disciples in Matthew 9:36–38 (esv, emphasis added):
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
The harvest is ripe, but the laborers are few. Jesus gives us the solution to this problem—pray earnestly! The command in the Great Commission to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18) is preceded 19 chapters earlier with the command “pray therefore.” As Dick Eastman says, “The degree to which prayer is mobilized is the degree to which the world will be evangelized.”
Jesus didn’t use the common word for prayer. He used the Greek word deomai, a much stronger word meaning to “plead desperately.” Also, Jesus didn’t simply tell His disciples to pray for laborers to be “sent” out to the harvest fields. Jesus used a much stronger word for sent—ekballo, meaning to “drive out or hurl forth.” This same Greek word ekballo is used when Jesus casts out demons!
In both Matthew 9:38 and Luke 10:2, Jesus commands us to deomai (plead desperately) to the Lord of the Harvest to ekballo laborers (thrust them forcefully) into His harvest!
Massive Wave of Prayer
One of the recent stories of nationwide desperate prayer is found in Indonesia. After experiencing great persecution in the 1990s and the tragic devastation of the tsunami in 2004 (250,000 lives lost), the Church in Indonesia came together in united, desperate prayer.
In 2012, 9,500 leaders from 86 nations gathered in Jakarta for the World Prayer Assembly. These prayer and missions leaders came together with the Indonesians and filled up the city soccer stadium with 120,000 people—including 20,000 children ages 4–14, and 20,000 young adults, 18–30 years old. This was combined with 385 other stadiums filled with Indonesians praying together for a fresh wave of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord to cover the earth as the waters cover the seas (Hab. 2:14).
Today, Indonesia has 567 citywide prayer networks united across denominations and generations. Recently they celebrated the ten-year anniversary by coming together in a virtual World Prayer Assembly (worldprayerassembly.org). Thousands of believers gathered in watch parties across Indonesia, with others joining from 101 nations.
Under this canopy of united, strategic, and sustainable prayer, the Church in Indonesia—the largest Muslim nation in the world—has been growing at an explosive rate.
Millions of Hours of Prayer
These last three years we have witnessed a powerful move of the Spirit amongst the children and youth in West Africa. This new initiative, called Last Quarter Evangelism, has been mobilizing millions of children ages 4–14 to pray and share their faith.
Candy Marballi describes “a student-designed, student-led outreach running from October 1through December 31in partnership with All Africa Baptist Fellowship (AABF), All Africa Baptist Youth Fellowship (AABYF), and The Prayer Covenant.” She says, “We rejoice over the one million conversions to Jesus through the witness and testimony of these young people in the first two years of this massive outreach initiative.”1
During Ramadan in 2022, intercessors logged 43,000 hours of committed prayer (people committing to 15 minutes each day) with specific Bible-based prayer points on behalf of the unreached Muslim cities throughout the Middle East. We culminated this time by praying for 24 of the most unreached cities on the Muslim night of power called One Miracle Night.
The RUN family joined together with the Jesus Film global leadership team and partners and the International Prayer Council to host the global family 24/7 virtual prayer room. Together we saw 50 million hours of prayer offered, praying for Christ to be exalted and gospel movements to emerge throughout the Middle East!
In one of these villages, a group of Jesus followers was searching for a people hidden up in the mountains. They wanted to give them a Bible translated in the people’s heart language. The believers prayed for an opportunity to share the good news of Jesus but couldn’t find the hidden group.
One day they discovered that this Bible was missing when they woke up in the morning and then would reappear when they came home from work each day. After several nights of watching this pattern, they decided to stay up one night and see what was happening to the Bible. During the night a dog came, picked up the Bible, and took off running.
They thought to themselves, Let’s follow the dog—and sure enough, this dog led them to the very people they were searching for. They had a chance to share Jesus with them, and the village came to Christ!
Listen, if God can use a dog to accomplish His work, He can use any of us. As Hudson Taylor said, “When we work, we work, but when we pray, God works.”
Raising Up 100 Million Intercessors
One of the exciting collaborative prayer and evangelism efforts emerging over the last several years is called the Go Movement—calling every believer to be a witness, with a vision to raise up 100 million intercessors for a billion-soul harvest. Everyone can reach someone. And together we can reach the world for Christ.
In 2021, thousands of churches were mobilized in prayer and evangelism, resulting in millions of people coming to faith in Africa in May 2022. If these numbers are true, they are comparable to any of the great revivals/spiritual awakenings throughout church history!
God has invited us into a “decade of harvest,” where the human cooperation in prayer and the empowered proclamation of the gospel has begun to intersect with the Divine Sovereignty of God—a God-breathed Christ awakening has begun to emerge in the nations of the earth!
In 2022, Global Voice of Prayer (formerly Global Day of Prayer) partnered together with several other global prayer movements around the world to produce a powerful and inspiring one-hour documentary called Come to the Table, documenting the prayer and missions movements over the last few decades.2
Restoring Historic Prayer Movement
I believe today we are seeing the restoration of the Moravian prayer and missions movement of the 1700s. Last year marked the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Moravian community in Herrnhut, Germany.
Back in 1722, a group of 300 Bohemian Moravians, fleeing persecution, arrived in East Germany and were blessed by a wealthy aristocrat named Count Zinzendorf, who allowed them to build a small community on his estate. Zinzendorf named this community Herrnhut, which means “the watch of the Lord.”
This is truly one of the greatest stories of the impact of night and day prayer—100 years of prayer—that led to the sending of missionaries to the ends of the earth. On August 13, 1727, the Moravians experienced a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit during a communion service. It was a baptism of love where God’s love was shed abroad in their hearts and poured out in love for one another.
Following this, the Holy Spirit compelled them to build a canopy of united, strategic, and sustainable prayer that continued for 100 years. As they prayed night and day, including men, women, and children, God began to mark missionaries and send them to the nations of the earth. Three hundred-plus missionaries responded and helped to establish more than 5,000 missionary settlements around the world.
It was the worth of Jesus that compelled them to pray night and day and go on gospel mission. Their mandate was to “win for the Lamb who was slain, the due reward for His sufferings.” They continuously cried out, “Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow Him.”
Acceleration for the Unreached
Inspired by the story of the Moravians, we launched a new prayer initiative called Pray 110 (110cities.com). During the summer of 2021, we received insight and research from several of the largest and most effective house church movements around the world. They identified 110 cities that are “ripe for the harvest.”
Ninety-seven percent of the remaining unreached people groups on the earth live in these 110 cities. Believers are ready to launch movements with house church leaders, teams, and families in these cities between 2022–2025.
This is just the beginning, but these leaders sense it is time for massive multiplication and acceleration in these next three years. Our prayer strategy is to:
- prayerwalk each of these cities in the next three years, praying onsite with insight
- raise up 110 million people to pray daily for the peoples living in these 110 unreached mega cities
- establish on-going 24/7 prayer in each of these cities, building a canopy of night and day prayer, one prayer meeting at a time.
I invite you to sign up (110cities.com) and join us in praying for these cities. We will track the measurable results of the number of disciples made, Bibles translated, and churches planted in the next three years.
Prayer Is the Key
We have a phrase in our house of prayer: “Little keys open big doors.”
Let’s take this little key called prayer, put it in God’s hand, and believe God will open a big door called revival and awakening in the nations of the earth!
God releases His power in response to the prayers of His people. I believe He is so much better than we think He is and doing more than we think He is doing in response to our prayers.
Jesus must have the supremacy, the predominance, preeminence, central focus, exaltation, visibility, and raison d’etre! It all belongs to Him! Because of His sacrifice on the cross, we declare with the 24 elders and the four living creatures, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev. 5:12).
May God do immeasurably more than all we ever ask or even imagine—all for His glory, for our joy, and for the salvation of the multitudes in the nations!
1Video recap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUj3mXX6hxw
2 Video recap: https://www.globalvoiceofprayer.com/about-us/
JASON HUBBARD is the director of the International Prayer Council (ipcprayer.org) and author of Moravian Miracle. He is also a member of America’s National Prayer Committee.
