Jeff Finley
By Jeff Finley
The day before the official start of General Conference 2023, many Free Methodist Church USA members gathered Monday for the National Prayer Summit to listen for God’s voice, seek wisdom and discernment, surrender to the Lord’s will, ask for the Holy Spirit to move among them, and consecrate the week’s gatherings.
As the summit ended, Life Connection Church Lead Pastor Stuart Welch of Modesto, California, described the summit as “an amazing opening — or the opening to the [GC23] opening.”
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“Sometimes you can be in ministry so long that your focus then becomes church, and it doesn’t become what we’re talking about today.” – Lead Pastor Stuart Welch
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“The words were so inspiring and encouraging and just a reminder why we got into ministry,” Welch told Light + Life. “Sometimes you can be in ministry so long that your focus then becomes church, and it doesn’t become what we’re talking about today. I enjoyed every speaker and enjoyed our prayer at our table learning from one another — truly a blessing.”
Speakers included Light & Life West Pastors Charles and Carolyn Latchison, East Michigan Conference Co-Superintendent and Lansing Central Free Methodist Church Lead Pastor Joanna DeWolf, Chapel of Change Christian Fellowship Co-Pastor Laura Warth, and Free Methodist World Missions Director of Global Engagement and FMCUSA Strategic Catalyst for Global Collaboration and Gerald Coates. Bishops Emeriti Matthew Thomas, David Roller and David Kendall led the gathering in Communion and then consecrated GC23 to the Lord. National Prayer Ministry Directors Brett and Barb Heintzman led in worship.
A Time and an Opportunity
The theme for this year’s summit was “This Kairos Moment.” Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning a time, an occasion, a fitting season, or an opportunity.
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“It’s a time to acknowledge God is ready to do something.” – Charles Latchison
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Charles Latchison said Scripture includes dozens of Kairos moments. The moments continue today with “the heart of God being revealed in powerful, beautiful, fascinating ways. It could be for individuals, but it’s also moments in time and space for churches, for conferences and, yes, for denominations. It’s a time to acknowledge God is ready to do something. It’s a time to acknowledge God wants to reveal Himself in a certain way.
Carolyn Latchison asked, “What is it going to take for you — for me — right now to be fully present in our hearts, our minds, with God, with one another so that we recognize and we catch and not miss the soft, the simple, the subtle Kairos moments that God has already ordained for us to encounter with one another?”
DeWolf encouraged us to listen in prayer by looking down, looking around, and letting God lift up our heads. She also encouraged us to move while praying.
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“Don’t use prayer as an excuse.” – Superintendent Joanna DeWolf
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“Sometimes we can use prayer as an excuse not to move,” she said. “Don’t use prayer as an excuse, friends. If God’s shown you what to do, He’s not going to give you another thing to do until you do that one.”
Warth shared about how she developed a prayer life and spiritual discernment with God’s help. She recalled, “He was teaching me how to pray. He was teaching me how to learn to discern His voice so that I can apply the wisdom of the Spirit in my choices and in my living, and I became like B.T. Roberts described, ‘sincere and anxiously desiring to dwell in the secret place,’ and I began to ask the Lord to show me what He wanted me to do. He said, ‘Teach my people to pray, and He began to fill me with a love for righteousness and a hatred for evil.’”
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“Consider with me the balance of living in a submissive spirit to the will of God and a cooperative spirit to the will of God.” – Gerald Coates
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Coates encouraged summit participants to “consider with me the balance of living in a submissive spirit to the will of God and a cooperative spirit to the will of God. This submissive spirit of resignation and weakness lives in collaboration with the cooperative spirit, which can test and approve what God’s will is.”
The three bishops emeriti, who retired in 2019, led the summit in dedication, communion and consecration. Thomas noted, “Before we consecrate this General Conference for the glory of God and His will to be done, we must dedicate ourselves to live according to His purpose and, as a community, seek to do that collectively together.”
Dinner for Y’all
Later Monday evening, the National Prayer Ministry sponsored a dinner with speaker Larry Walkemeyer, who serves as the FMCUSA co-strategic catalyst for multiplication along with his wife, Deb. He shared a message titled “Y’all” based on Numbers 11 and Acts 2. Reflecting on the Numbers passage, he asked, “Do we really pray the Moses’ prayer? … Do we pray, ‘anoint me’ — is that our main prayer? Or is it ‘anoint our people, Lord’?”
Referencing this year’s revival at Asbury University, he said, “It wasn’t a superstar preacher who drew thousands to little Wilmore, Kentucky. It was the Spirit of God on an everyday people — people without a title but with the Holy Spirit because they had been in the presence of God.”
Walkemeyer noted that “in Acts 2, the word all is used 14 times as if God wants y’all to get it.”
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“All of God’s people can receive God’s spiritual fire on their heads, but only urgent prayers of faith can kindle the flame.” – Larry Walkemeyer
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He concluded, “All of God’s people can receive God’s spiritual fire on their heads, but only urgent prayers of faith can kindle the flame. This is a vital Kairos moment. May we claim it for the sake of the movement of the Holy Spirit that our country and our world so desperately need.”
During a closing prayer, Brett Heintzman (who also serves as the denominational communications director and Light + Life’s publisher) said, “Holy God, it is not beyond you to put fire on the heads of 1,700 people [approximately the number registered for GC23]. It is not beyond you to follow people into new ministries. It is not beyond you to call people off the bench into the frontlines of ministry. It is not beyond you to send your Holy Spirit in a mighty and powerful way, but it might be beyond us unless we give ourselves to prayer.”
Visit npmfmc.org to learn more about the National Prayer Ministry.
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