Be Excellent to Each Other

Several years ago, I hit a wall concerning the House of Prayer.I got tired of trying to populate prayer meetings.In fact, if I want to be brutally honest and a bit crass, I felt like I was trying to sell a product (prayer), in a glutted market.And people weren't buying.But about four years ago, an important shift happened. I felt the nudging of The Lord to change my focus.Instead of building programs of prayer, what would happen if we cultivated a spiritual family with prayer at the heart?In our recent visit to the Stockbridge Boiler Room, our team got a pretty good picture of what that could look like.

Instead of filling their corporate life with programs, they have cultivated space. Space to share life. To know and be deeply known. They have dug down into teachings around Sonship/Daughterhood (recommended reading, "Orphan, Slave, Son by Ben Pasley"). They have drawn a larger circle around what they call family, and are inviting the lonely from their neighborhood to step into the circle.They have cultivated a culture of honor in their midst, and while we were visiting exemplified the classic exhortation brought to us from Bill & Ted from their excellent adventure.The prayer movement, in my experience, can attract strays and orphans. People who don't feel like they fit anywhere, who have been (or felt they have been) misunderstood. But God puts the lonely in families, and leads out the captives with singing. We were blessed and challenged by the loving witness of prayer filled family we got to experience at Stockbridge.;