The Power of the Upper Room
"How Prayer Can Change Your City" The California Prayer Model
by
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What if a blue print could be found that showed how the disciples of the First Century Church were able to reach the known world in their day? They did not have mass media, mass transit, or the Internet to communicate with. Yet, they were able to network cities to mobilize prayer that transformed whole cities. As of January 2000, we are again a First Century Church for the next hundred years. There seems to be an ever-increasing desire in the body of Christ to look back at the First Century Church of the Apostles. There is a deepening thirst to recapture the dynamic life of the early church. This hunger is creating a dissatisfaction with business as usual. The body of Christ is hungering to see a church that, so walks in the love and power of Christ, the world around it is transformed. I believe the book of Acts contains glimpses of Christ’s blue print to transform our cities through the power of prayer. If there are principles God gave for prayer that can change cities, then traces of these truths ought to be observable through out history. I believe that these powerful principles behind the world’s greatest prayer movement do exist. They first surface in the upper room. They further come into focus in the book of Acts as the disciples move from city to city to apply them. They continue to surface through out history as God’s people rediscover them and reap the blessings of applying them. The book of Acts challenges us to look beyond our program based approach to weekly prayer meetings, or formalized times of prayer. It beckons us to see afresh God’s design for reaching our cities through the power of prayer. These life changing principles have a wide range of application. From the individual prayer closet to the corporate setting of a citywide prayer room, Christ calls us to experience the dynamic life of the early church by rediscovering the power of the upper room. As a pastor, I have always thought that every church should have set prayer meetings and gatherings on special occasions. After all Jesus did say, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples." In my training as a pastor, prayer was worked around the life of the church where it could fit. Since only a few attended weekly prayer meetings, it was a minimal disruption to the activity of what we called, "Church." The book of Acts invites us to turn our perspectives upside down when it comes to the priority of prayer in the church. Prayer is not something the church does; it is to be what the Church is all about. In other words, God started the church for the early believers so they would understand that prayer does not just fit into the business of the Church; but church fits into the business of prayer out of prayer.
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About the Book
This book reaches back to the book of Acts to suggest that the upper room experience of the early disciples speaks down through history to the 21st century about how your city and region can be transformed through the power of united prayer. This book looks to catch glimpses of principles employed by the disciples in the book of Acts, which radically changed society and history.
About the Author
After serving for 13 years as a pastor and evangelist, Jerry Bowers started a regional prayer room ministry in cooperation with local pastors to help mobilize prayer and connect cities for the purpose of regional transformation. The prototype he has developed seeks to employ the dynamics of the upper room, which are found in the first 15 chapters of the book of Acts, to the 21st century.