Fresh Encounters by Daniel Henderson

Author:Daniel Henderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Endnotes

1. As quoted by Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind Fresh Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997) p. 57.

2. A. B. Simpson., “Himself,” (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, Inc., 1885, 1990). From the booklet Himself.

PART FOUR

Vision for an Encountering Community

CHAPTER TEN

Experience the Encounter Together

Billy, motivated and endowed with athletic skills, dreamed of becoming a star baseball player. Unfortunately, his little league coach was not familiar with the keys to a winning game. Rather than gathering his eager players for regular practice, Billy’s coach sent the players home every day with a ball, bat, and glove to practice the game—alone. Billy tried to reach proficiency in baseball, but struggled with a deep sense of frustration about the game.

Each weekend Billy’s group lined up against an opposing squad, but could not win a game. They never learned to play together as a team. By the end of the season Billy’s dream of the big leagues faded.

If his coach had understood that baseball is a team sport, he could have propelled Billy’s ambitions to reality. If the coach valued team practice, Billy and his teammates could have tasted the thrill of victory. Instead, the coach’s lack of awareness squandered Billy’s potential and caused youthful ambitions to vanish.

Many pastors believe prayer is more an individual sport, not a team sport. They send eager church members home each week to practice in solitude. Frustrated by their inability to excel, many give up their hopes of praying with consistency and conviction. Dreams die. Individuals give up. The team never excels.

Many pastors believe prayer is more an individual sport, not a team sport.

Some things are meant to be shared. In the normal course of daily life we share our birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings, meals and sports leagues with friends and family. In our faith there are certain activities that we best experience in community—worship, communion, fellowship, baptisms and, yes, prayer.

A Culture of Individuals

In our Western culture we seem to believe it is more important to pray alone than with others. This is a symptom of our basic view of society. In his book, The Connecting Church, Randy Frazee describes ours as a culture of “individualism.” He notes that we no longer are born into a culture of community but a “way of life that makes the individual supreme or sovereign over everything.”1

Frazee documents this as a problem, especially for those born after World War II. He laments the impact on the church in that we have “all too often mirrored the culture by making Christianity an individual sport.”2

Alexis de Tocqueville noted that prior societies did not even have a word for individualism.3 They had no conception of an individual who did not belong to a group and who could be considered absolutely alone. One observer said that we have become a society of solo sapiens.4

As it relates to prayer, we have lost the New Testament conviction that we must pray together, first, if we are to learn to pray alone.

“Why have we neglected the corporate emphasis on prayer found

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