Mark Batterson: What Happens When the Church Stops Praying?

What happens if National Community Church stops praying?

Wow! I think the very first thing that comes to mind is we would get bored. Soren Kirkegaard said boredom is kind of the ultimate sin. I don’t think you can live a Spirit-led life and be bored at the same time. So when you stop praying it takes the supernatural element out of what we’re doing and the church becomes a club. There’s no conviction of the Holy Spirit, no miracles—then the church stops being a movement and becomes a museum to what God has done in the past.

If you want God to do something new, you can’t keep doing the same old thing. You have to do something different, and I think prayer is the difference between you fighting for God and God fighting for you. So if we stop praying, we’re on our own and I don’t think we’re going to get very far. When you start praying it begins to create some of that momentum you can’t manufacture—it’s God beginning to move.  

Mark Batterson
Mark Battersonhttp://markbatterson.com/

Mark Batterson serves as lead pastor of National Community Church (www.theaterchurch.com) in Washington, DC. One church with seven locations, NCC is focused on reaching emerging generations. The vision of NCC is to meet in movie theaters at metro stops throughout the DC area. NCC also owns and operates the largest coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. Mark has two Masters Degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of the best-selling books: In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, Wild Goose Chase, Primal: A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity, and Soulprint.

Amy Orr Ewing: The As/So Dynamic

Without love, all our accomplishments, efforts and breakthroughs are just noise.

Greenwood Baptist Church: No Strings Attached

The church leadership purposefully lowers what they ask their people to do so that anyone—introverts, kids, the elderly—can be involved.

How Can We Avoid ‘Believing’ the Bible While Denying What It Actually Says?

We need to learn, and teach other people, not just to read the Bible but also how to interpret it, so they don’t end up being Bible-believing heretics or Jesus-followers who follow a Jesus different than the real Jesus of the Bible and history.