United Prayer Track: Tooling for Global Impact

Jack L. Dennison

The United Prayer Track was formed in 1990 under the leadership of Dr. Peter Wagner. Incredible advances by the kingdom of God have occurred in the last several years through united prayer. As we look toward the “Mid-decade” progress report at GCOWE ’95, we offer this report regarding our progress and future steps.

The United Prayer Track is committed to uniting the praying peoples of the world for the purpose of global evangelization. This linkage occurs in a number of ways.

First, by communicating with international and regional networks and representatives who work with literally tens of thousands of prayer cells and millions of individuals worldwide. It is vital to understand what God is doing and saying to praying people around the world. As one prayer warrior recently said, “If you want to know what is on the mind and heart of God, listen to the prayers of His people.” This information is then reported to the church worldwide.

Secondly, by assisting those networks and representatives in strategic planning and coordination. You can imagine the administrative task some international networks face when attempting to develop and coordinate the activities of thousands of cells in as many as 50 countries of the world. Some groups require help in developing an administrative infrastructure to support such an effort.

Third, the United Prayer Track headquarters in Pasadena, California, provides a clearing house and communication hub regarding strategic prayer initiatives worldwide.

Fourth, major catalytic events are occurring almost around the clock worldwide. Some occur in the U.S., while many others are planned in every conceivable spot of the globe. These catalytic events are rallying points for the Church of Christ worldwide, enabling it to united at a particular point in prayer toward a common goal, and, as well, a tooling time of instruction and on-the-job training for countless millions. The Praying Through the Window prayer event of October, 1993, would be one such example, and, of course, A Day To Change the World is another. At least one global event of this magnitude will be conducted annually through the year AD 2000.

Lastly, for the first time ever, there is a catalog containing the prayer and spiritual warfare tools available in the U.S. and abroad. The Arsenal was first published in April, 1994, by Dr. Peter Wagner and his staff of Global Harvest Ministries. The Arsenal is a must for any praying Christian, since it contains the most comprehensive listing of prayer and spiritual warfare resources available in the world.

The world is currently experiencing a Divine initiative of unusual magnitude. God is calling His people to Himself through prayer. Groups and individuals all over the globe report an unusual prompting to pray as never before. Through modern communications technology, it is possible to track this Divine movement of God through the peoples of the world as He is evangelistically bringing in the harvest of new converts. This evangelistic initiative is clearly of such enormity as to report staggering numbers of daily conversions worldwide. This twofold message of prayer and evangelism is clearly God’s message and method for the Church of the 21st Century. We are witnessing what the Bible has repeatedly declared, that we must first fight and win our battles in the heavenliest before we can seize the spoils on the earth. Prayer is the global force behind the global effect of harvest gathering.

God has ushered the church into a new period of divine initiative. This is a day like none other, a day without parallel and precedent.

Dr. C. Peter Wagner has assembled the greatest coalition of prayer groups in the history of the Church. In 1989, after returning from the Lusuanne II Conference on World Evangelization, Dr.. Wagner felt a clear call from God to begin to play a more focused role in the study, teaching, and leadership of spiritual warriors. He was surprised by the central role that spiritual warfare played in the workshops and plenary sessions of Lusuanne II. Upon returning to the U.S., he called a meeting of the top scholars and practitioners of spiritual warfare in the country to see what the Spirit of God was saying to each of them regarding prayer and spiritual warfare. soon thereafter, Dr. Luis Bush invited Dr. Wagner to coordinate the United Prayer Track of the AD 2000 Movement, of which the Spiritual Warfare Network is an integral part.

What is occurring in the global prayer movement and the involvement of the United Prayer Track as we move toward GCOWE ‘95?

Global Prayer Initiatives

• A Day To Change the World–June 25, 1994: 160 million Christians (one-third of the Christian Church worldwide) are expected to participate in the greatest prayer event in history.
• Marches for Jesus are expected in 150 of the 252 nations of the world, representing every time zone of the globe, and involving 50 million marchers joyously proclaiming the Lordship of Christ over the neighborhood, city, state, and country. Five hundred cities of North America are expected to participate.
• More than 5,000 Concerts of Prayer are expected worldwide. Many of these concerts of prayer will occur as the final day’s event, following marches, walks, and other prayer events.
• More than 50 million Christians representing more than 50 nations of the world will participate in prayer every day of June, and they will fast one day per week during that month as they seek God for global evangelization.
• One million children are mobilizing for intercession. (See article by Ester Ilnisky)
• Christians around the world will be gathering at the cardinal points of their continent, country, state, and/or city to proclaim the Lordship of Christ over that geographic area. Many groups will start at the cardinal points of the country or state and move inward toward the center of the area, proclaiming the Lordship of Christ as they go.
• Praying Through the Window II– October, 1995, will witness the deployment of 10,000 intercessors (400 twenty-five person teams) on prayer expeditions to the 100 least evangelized cities of the world, all of which are located within the 10/40 Window. Additionally, each of the 100 least evangelized cities will be “twinned,” that is, linked to at least one U.S. city and other cities around the world. This will provide additional prayer support and perhaps even a longer-term commitment on the part of these cities to those within the 10/40 Window.
• October, 1997–will concentrate prayer on the evangelization of 1000 geographic areas which contain “Million People Target Areas” (MPTA).

U.S. Prayer Initiatives

• Identification Repentance - not only is there a great deal of anger between the peoples of the world, but also between the various peoples which comprise the Church. Satan has used this anger to destroy the possibility of unity within the Body, unity that is essential to prayerful and evangelistic effectiveness. Here in the U.S., Peter Wagner has stated that American’s broadest sin is against the African-Americans through our long standing racial prejudice stemming back to our mistreatment and enslavement of this people in our colonial times and continuing to this day. American’s deepest sin is against the Native-American Indian people through our mistreatment, enslavement, annihilation, and treaty-breaking over the course of the last 150 years. Through Divine action, God seems to be calling His people to repentance for and identification with the sins of their forefathers. This spiritual action of genuine repentance, confession, and reconciliation is removing the walls of separation and restoring the oneness of the Church in a powerful way. This experience is more frequently becoming a spontaneous part of both large and small prayer gatherings around the world. God is bringing down the walls between the Japanese and Koreans, the Germans and Europeans, African and African Americans, American Anglos and African-Americans, and Native-American Indians, South-Africans and Africans, and many other ethnic groups. In the U.S., Cindy Jacobs of Generals of Intercession, Jean Steffenson of the Reconciliation Coalition, and John Dawson of Youth With A Mission are leading the way in trumpeting God’s call to reconciliation and providing the training and resourcing needed to do it.
• City Wide Prayer Alerts - at least 1,000 cities will have ongoing inter-denominational City Prayer Alerts functioning in which local church prayer groups will be praying during a particular hour each week around the clock (168 groups in each city) for spiritual renewal and global evangelization.
• National Directory of Prayer Groups - this first-ever publication will list and describe all denominational and independent prayer groups in the U.S. and update the informational on a regular basis.
• First Friday Prayer - the National Prayer Committee has declared the first Friday of every month a special national day to seek God through prayer.
• Pastors’ Prayer Summits - in more than 100 cities of the U.S., pastors gather annually in large groups and weekly in small groups for ongoing prayer. The four day event has no agenda, no speakers, no study. The time is set aside to be orchestrated by the Spirit of God as He leads the pastors into worship, Scripture reading, prayer, and personal confession and reconciliation. Pastors having once experienced a Prayer summit are unalterably changed and are better prepared and equipped to lead their congregation into a renewed emphasis upon prayer through solemn assemblies, prayer retreats, regular early morning prayer gatherings, and more. Prayer has returned as the bedrock of ministry for a growing number of pastors and churches.

Other Divisions

Though not organized as an actual division of the Prayer Track, the Spiritual Warfare Network is nonetheless an integral part. Begun in 1990, the Spiritual Warfare Network (SWN) seeks God’s wisdom and direction as to the ways in which strategic-level intercession might be used by the Holy Spirit in measurably advancing the cause of world evangelization. The network members seek one another for wisdom, encouragement, correction, intercession, partnership in ministry, and cross-fertilization of ideas. This spiritual camaraderie of the group provides balance, accountability, and protection in this fledgling field and movement. In February, 1994, the network sponsored the National Conference on Prayer and Spiritual Warfare in which more than one thousand people participated.

Spiritual Mapping Division Coordinated by George Otis, Jr., the Sentinel Group.

Spiritual Mapping is one of the newest strategies and resources added to the arsenal for serious intercession. George Otis describes spiritual mapping as “superimposing our understanding of forces and events in the spiritual domain onto places and circumstances in the material world.” The result of this effort is to be able to identify the spiritual forces behind many of the social systems and problems that hold people in bondage, as well as the spiritual forces currently at work within a specific geographic area. This provides strategic information for more concentrated and focused prayerful intercession regarding the activity of spiritual forces.

The Spiritual Mapping Division conducts research on the countries of the 10/40 Window and is presently engaged in a research of the sixty major cities within the Window to provide strategic intelligence for millions of prayer warriors.

In North America, this division has regionalized into nine geographic areas in order to support and train the individuals involved in emerging local spiritual mapping initiatives.

Strategic Prayer Evangelism Division Coordinated by Edgardo Silvoso, Harvest Evangelism.

Edgardo Silvoso is a recognized pioneer in the development of what is now being termed “prayer evangelism.” After much success in the cities of Argentina, as well as other places, Silvoso is demonstrating that lost people can be won to Christ primarily through prayer. At the same time, in Silvoso’s design, traditional evangelism methods are also brought in with particular effectiveness when they are focused on a saturation church planting within the city.

Not only has Silvoso designed what many missiologists consider the state-of-the-art evangelistic strategy for taking a city, but since it is based primarily on prayer, he has consented to join his activities with the United Prayer Track and organize this new division. One of his initial goals is to have this evangelistic strategy and process implemented in fifty cities by late 1995, and at that time convene a major International Prayer Evangelism Conference in Los Angeles, California.

All this represents only a portion of what God is doing worldwide. A fast-paced movement with such scope and magnitude is impossible to keep up with. God has ushered the church into a new period of divine initiative. This is a day like none other, a day without parallel and precedent. God is calling His people back to Himself through prayer and then sending them out to gather in the greatest harvest in history. We may well be witnessing the first fruits of the final harvest of history. In many parts of the world, the harvest is so great-the people are so ready to respond to Christ-as to literally exceed our capability to gather it. We must continue to mobilize prayers who will intercede with the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into His fields to gather the harvest before it goes to seed and we lose our opportunity.

Dr. Jack L. Dennison is Professor of Pastoral studies, Multnomah Biblical Seminary, Portland, Oregon. He is the Global Communications Coordinator for the United Prayer Track. This article originally appeared in the Global Church Growth Magazine, Vol. 31, No.2 April/June 1994, and is used by permission.