SUMMARY
I request your best prayer now and later.
May God grant me His wisdom from above for launching and leading an online ministry about prayer.
My longterm intention is to serve international college students online.
These precious souls are passing through an intense and complex season of their lives.
After graduation then they will return to their home country to become leaders.
What they experience during the few years they are in the USA will have major ripples for them, their families, and their communities for decades to come.
There are many ways I want to benefit this group of visitors to our shores during the coming years. One of the most valuable takeaways they could receive is to learn to pray better and to enroll in a prayer support network.
Like any college student, they must deal with the challenges of academics, social life, time management, money management, health, fitness, travel, housing, etc.
Plus to confuse matters more there are cross-cultural communications complications. English is usually their second or third language. Besides that, they need to navigate the American way of life. Imagine what it would be like in terms of dealing with daily life for a young American to go to college in India, China, or Germany.
Then there are the pains of separation from family and friends in their homeland.
All these matters and many more are best addressed with much prayer.
Thankfully over the decades I have experienced and witnessed hundreds of answered prayers. Those prayers were made my me privately, made for me by others, and that I prayed for others.
For decades I have asked God to help me to pray better. I have asked others to pray for me to pray better.
Along my prayer journey, I have learned many lessons and gained many insights about prayer.
I am ready and willing to share what I know with others. And I want to learn much more. That is why the name of this ministry is Let’s Pray Better. I want to pray better and I want to associate actively with others that want to pray better too.
BACKGROUND
During the first few months of 2018, I took an online course about ministering online.
It was inspiring and informative. During the course, I had a plan to offer interactive online education about the four gospels.
That would offer a summary of what others taught with links to them. It would cover the basics for new Christians, intermediate materials for most Christians, and into advanced for those ready to go deeper.
There would be ways for learners to interact. This would be in the format of a MOOC or Massive Open Online Course. My role was to create the structure and facilitate the interactions.
However, that did not become a reality by the deadline of the first of June. I never got it organized and structured enough.
What followed was a short season of discouragement and depression.
Then I prayed much and others prayed for me.
Initially, my gameplan was to do a similar MOOC treatment on prayer BUT a year later.
As I prayed then I felt God prompt me to START with prayer.
SO I argued with God.
I told God that prayer is a very COMPLICATED subject.
I told God that prayer is a FUZZY subject. Prayer is unlike the four gospels with a well-defined source that has four chunks of text.
I told God that prayer is NOT my strength.
I told God that I wanted to get plenty of experience leading others online before I dealt with prayer.
After wrestling with God … He won.
Note that I have wrestled with God lots of times over the decades.
I set a new goal to launch in September of 2018. But that did not happen.
Many other things have happened in my life during these past 13 months. But I always felt that God was calling me to launch and lead an online ministry about prayer.
I am reminded of 2 Cor. 12:9 when Paul wrestled with God about his thorn in the flesh.
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.
So soon I will do what it takes to make a start.
I will offer my good intentions, plans, and weaknesses for God to guide.
It is my hope and expectation that is finally going to become a reality soon.
ORGANIZATION
The mere word prayer is simple. Yet the subject of prayer includes a wide range of knowledge and various applications.
Other simple words that cover such a complex range of facets include cooking, parenting, and gardening. All of those subjects have an overabundance of books, websites, seminars, workshops, etc. for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced learner.
My biggest challenge currently is crafting the initial organizational structure about prayer.
If I was dealing with parenting then the timeline of the parent would be a built-in core reference. For example preconception, pregnancy, and then the parent relating with the infant, child, teen, and adult.
Cookbooks and gardening books are ordered into useful categories that become chapters.
Pray for God to guide me in making sense of prayer. I need this for my sake as the leader and teacher. This is especially needed so that I can effectively educate and guide others.
PIECES
During the last 13 months, I have been diligently collecting an abundance of ideas related to why and how to pray better. When I would get an inspiration I would write it on paper and then later transfer that to my online mind map.
Over the decades I have made many attempts to improve my prayer life. I have hundreds of index cards with headings to prompt better prayers.
I have started but not continued prayer lists of people to pray for daily.
When I lived at the homeless shelter for 3 years I preached on Saturdays at a small church for homeless people. There I preached more than a dozen sermons on prayer. I have those sermon notes to adapt.
I have read some books on prayer that I would highly recommend.
Over the decades I have made prayer requests at online prayer groups and from that, I witnessed amazing answers to prayers. I want to share the links to the best online prayer groups.
I have written some one-page prayers that many have liked.
I have written more than a hundred tweet size prayers.
I have moved all my clothes out of my walk-in closet and put them in a stand-alone wardrobe in my bedroom. That was inspired by the movie War Room. I go there to pray in the mornings and evenings.
I have a large box with notes about prayer that dates back before the Internet.
SO there are plenty of pieces to assemble into useful and simple lessons for others.
STEW
What I intend to create in the coming months related to prayer is like a stew. That image works for me because all the ingredients blend together yet they remain somewhat separate.
In a salad, the ingredients stay separate.
In a smoothie all the ingredients get blended.
Here are some of the ingredients that will be in this stew in the coming years.
I have much from the files that I will review and revise. These will appear as lessons, sermons, written prayers, worksheets, and more to put online gradually.
I will offer links to the best resources related to prayer.
I plan to write many short ebooks or 12 to 24 pages with suitable application exercises during the coming months.
I intend to offer a few short ecourses before this time next year.
The most valuable offering is an online membership site. I plan to use Ning www.ning.com which is like a private Facebook page but it is much easier to navigate. I have been a member of Ning communities and it is a great way to bring together like-minded people in interactive ways.
At the online community, people can post their own prayer requests, pray for each other, and testify about answered prayers.
I enjoy interviewing people. So I will include some interviews for those who have major prayer needs. I will ask the community members to pray for them. Then I will follow up with another interview later to notice progress, testimonies of answered prayers, and new prayer requests.
I still want to offer a MOOC Massive Open Online Course on prayer. I seek to enroll many supporters to make that a reality starting in January 2020.
Unlike some college courses that you take one time and then forget; there is no end of learning about applying lessons about prayer. So this stew will continue to simmer and have more added for a very long time.
I have a huge amount to offer others as this starts. And I have much more to learn for others. SO there is more than enough potential present.
I again request your best prayers now and later.
Then as God answers our prayers He will do more than I can ask or think according to Ephesians 3:2.
STRUCTURE
In the popular book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People the writer Stephen Covey teaches to begin with the end in mind. What has worked for others is to have a vision for the long term and craft a gameplan to get there.
One of my current challenges is to work with God to write a summary of what the end is that God has put on my heart. This is like a pencil sketch of a large landscape. It is the long term and big picture of how I intend to serve international college students in the coming 3 to 5 years.
What I have begun to do is write a simple summary of the mission, vision, and core values. This will serve guidelines for me and those I enroll in helping along the way. Obviously, I can be very wordy, yet this needs to be very brief. So pray for simplicity with clarity.
MARKETING
Besides the content related to prayer, there must also be marketing to deliver the content. Those marketing parts need to be woven together into synergistic systems. In other words, it is one thing to have valuable resources to offer others. But there also needs to be effective ways to identify the target audiences, contact them in ways that appeal, and guide then through simple steps to enjoy the promised benefits. Pray for God to guide me in designing the short term and long term ways for the online community, ecourses, emails, and more work together as a fluid system.
Over the decades I have made several large websites. I have written dozens of pages of articles that I posted online. I published sermons online. But I failed to market them well. So I understand the importance of internet marketing.
My brother has been involved in internet marketing for years. He has passed to me lessons and resources that will help in the short term to get the operations launched. This is a new skill set for me so pray for God to guide me.
NEXT
I will populate that Ning site with a selection of my lessons. Then many more lessons will be added in the coming months.
I will design the initial ways for the members to interact.
I will review my notes and consult my brother on how to design systems to enroll in the Launch Team.
These Launch Team members will include intercessors, helpers, beta testers, editors, donors, and advisers. We will collaboratively co-create the MOOC and other services for the international college students to be launched in January 2020.
Before the January launch, we will conduct online and offline research about prayer and international college students. We will use surveys, polls, and questionnaires. The intention is to focus on solving the challenges of prayer with biblically-based solutions.
Other college students and anyone else is welcomed to use this Ning community if they follow the community guidelines. But they are not the main emphasis. For example, there are pizza places that cater to kids' birthday parties. Any senior citizen can eat there. But it was designed for them.
Obviously, I cannot do this alone. I must enroll and work with talented and active volunteers. These will mostly be Americans that want to help serve the international college students. As the founder and executive director, I must clearly communicate the vision of where we are going long-term, the game plan of how we will get there, and the mission of why this is important. I have never done anything like this before. Some times I feel like when Gideon who was called to do the impossible. So I ask for your special prayers.
INVITATION
You are invited to pray as soon as you finish reading this.
Then please pray as the Holy Spirit prompts you.
The greatest need is always more prayers.
During the coming weeks, I will gradually develop segmented email lists. Some messages will go to intercessors that opt-in for a weekly summary of prayer requests and testimonies. There will be a group of intercessors that gets the monthly summary.
Besides as an intercessor, you are invited to help me as a beta tester. I want to have a group of people that receive my lessons about prayer and give me constructive feedback.
Part of what I will be offering in the Ning community is lists of recommended resources about prayer. I can easily find long lists of daily devotionals. But I want to know from you and others what few would you most highly recommend? Please reply to this email with those titles and authors.
What books, workbooks, sermons, online courses, etc. about prayer would you highly recommend?
What healthy habits, routines, rituals, etc. have helped you gain and maintain your prayer life?
What are the main problems, challenges, difficulties, etc. do you have with prayer?
What are your biggest questions about prayer? I will take such questions and pray about them. I will do the research. I will include my findings in the online community without revealing your name.
Where there are many similar questions and problems about prayer that will shape how I create future interactive ecourses.
What are your favorite Bible verses related to prayer?
PRAYER
Thankfully as a retired person, I have plenty of time and energy for this endeavor.
Getting this going and keeping this growing is my top priority.
The vision and game plan are far too big for me to do alone. So I must enroll and work with others.
Pray for me to gracefully enroll and communicate clearly with the Launch Team.
I will be seeking intercessors as well as advisers and donors to serve together on the Launch Team.
Pray for me to find advisers like international college students themselves, missionaries, and college pastors.
As a retired person I have plenty of time to contribute to this. So during the coming months, I will be seeking to enroll other retired people like teachers, missionaries, pastors, chaplains, and professors. May God prepare them and bring us together.
Pray for God to guide us and provide the people as well as resources when needed.
CONCLUSION
Finally, the name I have been using in my mind and notes for this is Let’s Pray Better.
I believe that many Christians want to pray better. There is always room for improvement.
But in order for prayer life to improve there needs to be effective instruction as well as suitable support.
There are proven principles of prayer that can be understood.
But there is a gap between the theory and making practical applications.
I believe that we can work together so that all of us pray better.
At the end of the day, I am asking you to have faith that God can and will work through us for His glory.
Shalom
John
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