Spiritual Battle 3
Rages Around Our Cities

TRANSFORMING OUR CITY

We Are The City

The spiritual battle 3 that many are involved in is transforming our city.  We are the city – our city is made up of people and is therefore a complex combination of personalities and attitudes.

My own journey in efforts at transforming cities has run from attempting to change the entire city, to changing neighborhoods, to changing churches, to transforming the mind of individuals through mind renewal.

This journey, and the lessons learned will be discussed in future aticles.

That None Should Perish

Ed Silvoso, author of That None Should Perish and numerous articles such as “Paradigms for Reaching a City”, is President of Harvest Evangelism, Inc. and a leader in the Argentina Revival. He is also influential on the national level in the USA for transforming cities.  Many of the ideas and thoughts for this article are taken from the works of Rev. Ed Silvoso.

The Main Key in the Spiritual Battle 3

The main key to transforming our city is to build a canopy of prayer over the whole city, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and work place by work place so that the spiritual climate becomes changed through Prayer Evangelism.

Prayer Evangelism

Prayer Evangelism is talking to God about our neighbors before we talk to our neighbors about God.  The biblical model for this is found in Luke 10:5-9 where we are instructed to BLESS them, FELLOWSHIP with them, TAKE CARE OF THEIR NEEDS and finally to PROCLAIM THE KINGDOM OF GOD to them.

Hope For Our Cities

What gives us hope that our city can be transformed is that a spiritual awaking is happening in a number of other cities. Also, what gives us hope that our city will be transformed in spite of the raging spiritual battle 3, is that a number of paradigm shifts have taken place or are in the process of taking place.

Paradigm Shifts

A paradigm is a model or a pattern.  A paradigm shift is a change in that model or pattern, thus allowing us to see reality through a different, and usually more effective frame of reference.

Some of the paradigm shifts, - patterns of thinking or models - already in place are as follows:

Paradigm Shifts In Place

1.    There is only one Church in the city.  There are many congregations, but there is only one church.  Likewise, there are many under shepherds (pastors), but there is only one Chief Shepherd (Jesus Christ).

     We still do not know how to operate as one church, how to reach spiritual unity or even unity of purpose for that matter, but we no longer doubt that there is only one church in the city and that its spiritual unity is of paramount importance.

2.    Prayer Evangelism is the key to transforming our cities for Christ.   There is a deep conviction among pastors who regularly pray together that the grace to change our cities has already been deposited in the city by God. 

This is particularly true for the pastors in our area from across denominational lines who fervently pray for revival in this area on a weekly basis.  It is an established conviction that it will take the whole church to present the whole gospel to the whole city and that Prayer Evangelism is the best way to equip the saints to do such work.

3.    Cities must be transformed for Christ NOW.  Gone are the days when a congregation would send missionaries to some far off land fully convinced that those missionaries would transform that area WHILE NOT BELIEVING THAT THE CITY WHERE THAT CONGREGATION LIVED SHOULD ALSO BE TRANSFORMED FOR Christ.  The days are now here when we have missionaries to our own America cities.

Today Acts 1:8 has come into sharper focus in that we know the Great Commission begins with a city and that city is the city where we live.  In addition, the power promised by the Lord is not simply power to improve our Christian life but power to reach the lost.

4.    Pastors are called to pastor the city.  God loves the entire world. Jesus gave His life as a ransom for all.  God wishes that none should perish.  God is always inclusive when it comes to caring for the lost.

More and more pastors are seeing their city, with its many clusters of lost people – schools, bars, hospitals, city hall, businesses, jails, neighborhoods – as their church.  They are beginning to see that everyone is a member of the congregation entrusted to them even though those people don’t, or never may have, attended church.

A pastor in Argentina was asked how large his congregation was and he answered, “We pastor 130,000 people.  Some of them are prostitutes, others homosexuals, most of them lie and cheat, but they are all under our care.”  He was referring to the population of his city that he and his follow pastors have come to see as their flock.  Talk about the raging spiritual battle 3!

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are additional paradigms but to many for this article – those above are the ones that are in place.  The point is that our cities can be transformed and a key strategy to doing that is Prayer Evangelism. Prayer Evangelism will help provide a canopy of prayer over your entire city.  However, we must be ever vigilant and mindful of the raging Spiritual Battle 3

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