By Lloyd Mackey

Scott Burke is one of the leaders of City Church Intercessors.

Scott Burke, a baker in a Kelowna supermarket, father of eight, sometime amateur actor and a lay youth leader at Willow Park Church, hopes the growing interest in prayer will be a source of encouragement, both to individual Christians and many of the community’s Christian ministries.

Drawing on his father role, Burke wants to encourage Kelowna Christians with the thought that “spending time with the Father is the most critical thing we can do.”

He congenially refers to a recent incident involving his own son. “He lost his car keys, and called a towing firm to help him out. It was late in the evening and I was already asleep. The next morning, I was able to pop the door. I let him know that he could have asked his father.”

City Church Intercessors is means for encouraging Christians to ask of, talk to and communicate with the Father, in a group setting.

It all started a couple of years ago when the leadership of the 32-church Kelowna Evangelical Ministerial Association  (KEMA) began wondering about a shift in emphasis. That shift was to include a focus on prayer, and the sense of unity which could potentially roll out from it.

There were three particular churches – as it happens, three of Kelowna’s largest, each with around 2,000 worshippers each Sunday – whose leadership felt strongly enough about the idea to take some initiative. They were New Life, Willow Park and Evangel. Willow Park is a multi-campus Mennonite Brethren congregation; Evangel is a long-established Pentecostal church; and New Life, listed as an independent church, has historic roots in the Vineyard movement.

Besides Burke, others in the leadership team include Marilyn Roesler, also a Willow Park member; Jeannie Rodgers, connected with New Life; and Will Sanchon, senior minister at Evangel. The CCI meets once a month and has been bringing together up to 50 or so at each session, who have one thing in common: meaning business about prayer.

Burke recognizes that the participants come from backgrounds that have varying approaches to and styles of worship and prayer. In encouraging unity of purpose, the leadership has been tried to ensure that there was openness and acceptance among the participants to each others’ styles.

“We want to emphasize, not just faithfulness in prayers, but an acceptance that prayer has become a lost art,” he suggests. “But it need not be that way, because God is our friend. We should want to talk with our friend.

“We try to pose the question ‘whose time is it?’ That helps us focus on shifting up the priority for communicating with God up from somewhere like 45th on the list.”

Continue article >>

Burke put together a very simple video to explain the concept – and the vision developed by the KEMA leadership – and has used it in a number of churches in order to help raise the profile for the movement.

CCI does a number of things to help keep things moving forward. Prayer sessions usually feature a representative from one of Kelowna’s ministries, so the participants get some exposure to a Christian activity in the community that might otherwise have escaped their attention.

Two such presentations, so far, have come from Teen Challenge and the chaplain for the Kelowna police. In both cases, they help move the pray-ers to think beyond their own circles of interest, to connect with people directly interfacing between the Christian community and the points of need beyond church walls.

Burke notes that one of CCI’s longer-term projects is to represent the Global Day of Prayer, which occurs each year at Pentecost.

In that way, praying people in Kelowna will be able to be in touch with major Christian spiritual movements and activities in dozens of nations. He points out that CCI is structured in such a way as to be accountable to KEMA. That way,  there is some assurance that the connection is with a breadth of church interest in Kelowna, rather than just relating to the few biggest congregations.

The KEMA church list draws from a range of denominations, including (with number of churches represented in each group, in brackets, when there is more than one), Baptist (5), Christian Brethren, Alliance, Evangelical Missionary, Foursquare, Independent Assemblies of God, Mennonite Brethren (4), Mennonite, Pentecostal (3), Presbyterian (2), Reformed, Salvation Army, United (2) Vineyard and Word Faith. In addition, there are three churches listed as interdenominational and three more as nondenominational.

Burke says Kelowna pastoral leaders are encouraging CCI to be a two-way street – not only to get people to be serious about prayer, but to be prepared to submit requests for prayer to the group, for what might be described as “wider coverage.”

The invitation on KEMA’s website (kelownachurches.com), for participation in CCI, reads as follows:

“Join with others who have a heart to pray for our city and the churches of Kelowna. Monday, November 5 at 7 pm at Evangel Church. We come together once a month to pray. We meet monthly on the first Monday of the month except when it is a holiday weekend – then we meet on the second Monday of the month . . . same time (7 pm), same place (Evangel Church, 3261 Gordon Drive).”

That should be simple enough to figure out, Burke hopes.

November 2007