Summit Ablaze
The Vision
The Concept
by Pastor Mark Ford - Executive Director of Love Akron
Initiative is found in the book of Leviticus 6. This chapter gives clear
instructions from the mouth of God to Moses as to the procedure and
protocol for offering burnt sacrifices on the Altar to the Lord.
There are many instructions in this chapter, but one that stands out
from all of them is the command in verse 12. God told Moses is was
imperative to "Keep the fire burning on the Altar continuously. It
must not go out."
Fire and the altar are consistently mentioned together in scripture.
In the tabernacle, the Altar of Incense or the "golden altar" was
accompanied with fire. When Elijah challenged the Prophets of Baal, he
said "the sign of the true God would be the One who answered by fire
that would consume the altar."
Summit Ablaze is asking the Churches of Summit County to accept the
challenge to "attend the Altar" by committing to pray for Summit
County for one week. We are asking each congregation to choose one of
the 52 weeks in 2012 and commit to a week of prayer. The amount of
prayer and the method of prayer will be unique to each congregation.
Love Akron is providing some suggestions on ways to structure the week
of prayer but these are only suggestions.
The Vision
by Pastor Mike Rybka - Community Church of Portage Lake
Every revival in history has been preceded by a movement of prayer – this is an irrefutable historical fact. The question we must ask now is, “Is revival still possible?” It is easy to get discouraged by the spiritual decline of our country and overwhelmed by the mounting spiritual, social, and financial needs we face every day. But let me encourage you with a promise of Jesus found in John 16;
“I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father.”
I believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, but this is one promise I find hard to believe. Oh, I believe it theologically, but if I’m honest with myself I have to conclude that I don’t really believe it practically. Simply put, if I really believed it, I would pray more. As E.M. Bounds once said, “The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it."
I believe that part of my problem, and the problem we face as a church is the sense of isolation in our prayers. Usually when we talk about prayer, we focus on personal and private prayer, even though the Bible is replete with passages that talk about the church praying as a group. If and when our church focuses on prayer, it usually is for no more than a week, and whatever little fire that was started quickly dies out. Prayer events like “See You at the Pole,” and “The National Day of Prayer” are powerful movements in uniting the church in prayer, but they are one-day events- a momentary flash, not a sustained fire. If you are like me you’ve experienced many ‘sparks’ of commitment to prayer that flame up briefly, only to die out in isolation.
When building a campfire we know that the fire will only take hold when the burning logs are stacked together. You can’t light a fire by separating the logs and trying to light them individually. So it is with revival and prayer. Our sparks for revival and commitment to prayer die out because they are not connected to the other sparks that God is igniting throughout our community. What if you knew that your prayers were being connected to the prayers of thousands of other believers and dozens of other churches throughout the city? How might it impact your prayer life if you knew that your prayers were part of an ongoing prayer movement throughout the city?
The idea of a “24/7” prayer ministry is one that has excited me in the past, but I’ve never seen it as close to possible. But my vision has been limited by a lack of faith in God, and the trap of isolation. I’ve given up on the idea because I saw it as a question of what I could do, or what my church could do – and I never asked, what could God do through His church! Summit Ablaze is an attempt to let God draw together the numerous sparks throughout Summit County with the desire that our shared heat will unite to form a new fire of prayer that will ultimately lead to a blaze of revival.