Nothing Excites Me More - Church Prayer Leaders Network

For the past 30 years, I have been involved in prayer mobilization and discipleship. Not sure how I got here—only the Lord, for sure.

Though a believer since age six, I was not much into prayer until a painful situation came into my life at age 30. Through absolute desperation and need, I turned to prayer. God used that event, along with a publishing project of writing a study guide to A.W. Tozer’s powerful book The Pursuit of God, to turn my heart toward Him in a much more significant way—and to turn me on to prayer.

Because prayer so radically changed my walk and passion as a Christian, I soon began wondering why everyone who claimed to be a follower of Jesus did not do this “prayer thing” in a major way.

Mike Jebb of Strategic Prayer Initiative (see ad on page 2 of Complete Issue PDF) says that in surveys, more than 70 percent of church-going Christians say they have a “poor to no prayer life”! Because I had been one of those strugglers who then grew into a person of prayer, God put within me a heart to help the average person in the pew who struggled with prayer. In 1997, while at NavPress, I launched Pray! Magazine as a tool. After seven years of editing Pray!, God moved me into focusing more on helping churches grow their people in prayer. Church Prayer Leaders Network (CPLN) became my ministry base.

Over the next 21 years, He empowered us to develop and publish more than 60 books on prayer, develop websites with hundreds of pages of prayer content, send thousands of equipping emails, and launch Prayer Connect magazine. God has blessed thousands of churches through CPLN!

The Future

As you may know, after a 13-year run, this is our last issue of Prayer Connect magazine. The finances have just made it too expensive to continue publishing issues in this format. However, this issue is not the end of Prayer Connect nor of the CPLN’s vision to equip and encourage praying churches. If you have an active subscription to either Prayer Connect or the full CPLN membership, you will continue to have access to everything at prayerleader.com.

We will continue to deliver fresh content to subscribers via a Prayer Connect blog. Watch for a sign-up. Current active subscribers and CPLN members will get this automatically. We will also launch The Praying Pastor, a blog for pastors written by pastors!

While Prayer Connect is ending as a magazine, the ministry of CPLN is not slowing down. In fact, we just completed our 25^th year of ministry! And while I am now 67, I pray God allows me to be a little like Caleb when it comes to extending my heart for growing prayer in churches. Nothing excites me more than continuing to encourage and equip pastors and prayer leaders in the fight for prayer in the church!

–JONATHAN GRAF is president of Church Prayer Leaders Network and the publisher of PrayerShop Publishing.