Over the last several months, our Home Office staff have been studying the Book of Acts in our weekly Bible Study. The action-packed account of the early church, seen through the eyes of Luke, provides myriad examples of how the Holy Spirit was intricately involved in shaping the disciples and in setting a foundation for the mission of the early church, which serves as a textbook for us today. The disciples were part of a cutting-edge ministry, boldly breaking cultural and religious barriers in radically new ways, often facing enormous risks to themselves and others. The Holy Spirit gave supernatural courage and guided them through dreams, visions, the Scriptures, and words of prophecy. The disciples acted accordingly. The early church’s structure was minimalistic and flexible, allowing rapid growth in scope and numbers (not in buildings) and facilitating contextual ministry wherever the Holy Spirit led them. The sharing of resources, caring for the poor, and treating people as equals in Christ was revolutionary. Their vision to take the Good News to the ends of the earth was outward-focused, as Jesus had commanded. The early church was clearly “cutting edge,” and the Prayer League has endeavored to model itself in a similar way.
I vividly remember using the term cutting edge when I served with the Prayer League at LAMB Hospital in Bangladesh. LAMB’s innovative approaches to holistic (mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical) community health and preventive health training, coupled with the provision of evidence-based tertiary medicine targeting the poor, women, and children, made it a cutting-edge work of the Prayer League. The driving force behind our desire to be at the cutting edge of holistic healthcare was to find effective ways to reach those who couldn’t easily access healthcare due to educational, cultural, religious, or geographical barriers. An overarching goal of LAMB continues to be that all experience the love of Jesus and understand what that means. Being at the cutting edge has required the ability to adapt to constantly changing realities, including in healthcare, personnel, funding, and the socio-economic situation in Bangladesh and around the world.
As LAMB now marks its 50th anniversary since being formally registered with the Bangladesh Government, the Prayer League will join LAMB and supporters from the local and international community in celebrating the impact of its cutting-edge services throughout this year. The Prayer League will feature LAMB’s work and impact this Jubilee year in various publications with the intention to build prayer support for this exciting ministry.
As the Prayer League endeavors to be cutting-edge in this digital age, amid cultural shifts and changes in our constituents, working locations, modalities, and personnel, we are also constantly adapting. One such adaptation is in communications, and it will impact our monthly Together In Prayer (TIP) publication. Chris and Kristin McWeeny, who have been instrumental in publishing and editing this TIP, among other responsibilities, have just started a three-month sabbatical. They sense that when they return from this sabbatical, they will concentrate more on prayer mobilization rather than communications and the TIP. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Chris, especially, for his faithful dedication in designing the TIP and in ensuring that the unreached people’s focus and the prayer requests from our fields were always prioritized over many years. I also thank Kristin for her editing! Let’s pray with them as they move into this sabbatical, that the training they hope to receive and the renewal they desire will be accomplished.
As for the TIP, it will undergo an overhaul while maintaining the emphasis on unreached peoples and prayer requests as we mobilize others in prayer. Over the next three months, we will take the opportunity to make these changes. In the meantime, our TIP readers and prayer warriors can expect to receive a monthly personal letter in place of the TIP as it undergoes this transformation.
The Prayer League has been working with an innovation and change management specialist over the last few months as we prayerfully consider how the Holy Spirit is leading us. I like how this consultant worded his final comments in his set of recommendations:
In the end, this is the work of the Holy Spirit guiding us to thread a needle that looks almost impossible. But just as the angel told Mary in the first chapter of Luke verse 37, ‘For with God nothing will be impossible.’ (RSV)
May we continue to endeavor to be led by the Holy Spirit as we seek to be on his cutting edge.