National Missionary Convention prayer: The unseen work behind the scenes
The four-day National Missionary Convention requires more than a year of planning, preparations, and prayer from hundreds of people you will never see on stage. This article highlights the โsendersโ behind the scenesโespecially those who prayโbefore and during the convention. Their quiet intercession helped support presenters, worship teams, technicians, and those responding to Godโs call.
- Prayer supported months of preparation and every major convention role.
- Backstage prayer before main sessions was constant and coordinated.
- Intercession strengthened mission commitments and encouraged weary servants.
By Mike Schrage
The four-day National Missionary Convention requires more than a year of planning, preparations, and prayer from hundreds of people you will never see on stage. In missions, for every cross-cultural โgoerโ there are hundreds of โsenders.โ So too, at the convention, for every person in the public eye or onstage, there are many more servants behind the scenes to guarantee that all goes as planned.
None of them are more important, or perhaps more unknown, than the army of those who pray for the convention.
Prayers of Preparation
The NMC venue is chosen three years in advance, and a committee is called one year in advance to decide major components of the convention. As years shrink to months, hundreds of people are contacted to pray, give, and participate in the convention. Hundreds of hours of calling, planning, and traveling are required.
Many hours of preparation go into choreographing the dramas, practicing the music, and preparing the visual pieces, but nothing is more important than the untold hours devoted to prayer. Prayer is the engine that drives the mission endeavor. Prayer is the earthly appeal for heavenly help. Prayer is placing the will of men into the hand of God. Prayer is the common manโs communiquรฉ that compels.
Before this 60th NMC, hundreds of kind and soft-spoken Christians quietly became a praying army. For months leading up to the Cincinnati meeting, nearly 20 megachurches in our fellowship adopted a portion of the world specifically to pray for. Hundreds of college students prayed for each workshop and main session presenter. Countless others prayed for those with important roles and responsibilities at the convention.
Prayers During the Convention
Prayer walkers helped prepare the site and supported efforts during the convention. An active prayer booth was โin session.โ No experience was more surreal, however, than the prayer activity occurring backstage before main sessionsโin groups of two, 10, and 20. Decision counselors who received and visited with the 105 people who came forward to commit their lives to full-time mission work met and prayed in advance for the โLord of the harvestโ to send more workers.
Prayers for the drama team, worship groups, and many technicians manning their computers, digital audio boards, and recording systems also were offered. To view the crowd, hear the worship, and see the prayers being offered backstage was an experience to relish. It served as an example of what God has ordered in the heavenly realms around the clock. As Christโs church prays, God listens, angels are deployed, and people are changed.
Seeing college students pleading for the Lord to โdo a new thing tonightโ was touching. Hearing seasoned missionaries call on God to give the church one more decade to reach one more people group before Jesus comes was as impactful as any sermon or presentation. Listening to elders pray as true shepherds and imploring God on behalf of the body of Christ was humbling. It was an honor and privilege to see the church in action in such ways.
Epitomizing these prayer warriors was a housewife who shared with Marsha Relyea Miles that she had been praying for her every day for the past year. She said she just wanted Miles to be encouraged by that prayer support. I felt as if I was on holy ground as these two women clung to one another and prayed together.
I will always remember their powerful example. I will always remember the effectiveness of their prayers and those of many others for a convention that truly made a difference.
They were doing the work all of us have been recruitedโno compelledโto do.
Mike Schrage, national prayer chairman for the 2007 National Missionary Convention, serves with Good News Productions, International, in Joplin, Missouri.
