In an effort to foster spiritual growth and connect believers across the globe, the Seventh-day Adventist Church established "global prayer partnerships" among local regions, or conferences, of the church.
In an effort to foster spiritual growth and connect believers across the globe, the Seventh-day Adventist Church established “global prayer partnerships” among local regions, or conferences, of the church. Using a “challenge factor” that gives priority to areas with the lowest number of Adventists determines which areas are linked, according to the church’s office of Global Mission.
“It’s a partnership,” says Michael Ryan, director of Global Mission, “where one conference—pastors, institutions—partners with another conference and each prays for the other. It goes as wide as they want to cast it.”
Using a “challenge factor” allows pairing of conferences where not only the need is great, but so is the opportunity for prayer, making it easier to allocate spiritual resources, he says. If assignments were made by the ratio of Adventists to the general population, a small island may have an equal stance with a province in China. The latter, however, would have a larger opportunity for net membership, which is reflected in the challenge factor score.
A good example of this is the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea, where one in six comes from an Adventist home. It is partnered with the Adventist Church’s Iraq field. Although the church entered in 1923, Iraq’s small Adventist community versus a national population of 23.5 million gives it a high “challenge factor.”
The program, which began 18 months ago, has brought about greater fellowship among the partnered regions, Ryan says. Many exchange letters and e-mails detailing spiritual progress and needs; some local regions help meet those physical needs when possible.
But the greatest benefit of the program, he says, is its ability to move people into a more spiritual, prayerful frame of mind, particularly for the world church and for the unreached.
“One survey indicates that we are a church that needs to place greater emphasis on prayer,” Ryan says. “We need to encourage participation in personal prayer, family prayer and ‘corporate’ prayer. This program can address all three areas.”
Having a church where members are actively praying for their peers in other areas is a “quality of life” issue that can also be a witness to the world at large, Ryan says “Look at the times in which we live. This is a program that would be a solution to a lot of problems.”
For the believer, he adds, “Prayer can keep the vocabulary of church members as heaven would have it.”