Today is Memorial Day in my nation.  It's origin can be traced back to the Civil War and it is a day when we as a nation are to remember those who gave their life in defense of this nation.  Dictionary.com defines a memorial as remembrance.  It is the act of thinking again or calling to memory. It means to bear in mind as if someone deserves a gift or a fee.  In other words, "we owe them" something.  

The concept of memorial is found all through scripture.  God enacted regular feasts to cause us to remember.  When Jesus instituted communion during a Passover meal He said, as oft as you partake of the bread and this cup, to do this in remembrance of me. 

What were we to remember?  His sacrifice for us!  

We find this concept extending through scripture to apply to virtually unknown people to.  For example, in Matthew 26:6-13 we find a woman who poured a very expensive jar of alabaster upon Jesus head.  According to commentaries this equated to about a years worth of wages.  The disciples saw her sacrifice as wasteful and they were indignant.  But Jesus acknowledged her sacrifice and says in verse 13 "Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her. 

What are we to remember?  Her great sacrifice obviously motivated by her great love for Jesus Christ, the Savior of her soul.  

In Acts 10:1-8 we find that the place where God chose to introduce salvation to the Gentiles was determined by the actions of Cornelius, a Centurion.  Acts 10:4 declares why?

We just received this report from Steve Buss and the One Hope network in Lane County Oregon.  Here's an excerpt from their newsletter.  

For two years, more than 40 churches + hundreds of people have prayed around-the-clock for our community. With specific insight from Christ-honoring leaders in every sphere, we’re praying. God is giving us eyes to see our community, teaching us to seek its “peace and prosperity,” and bringing glory to Jesus. There is more to come! Praise the Lord!

Steve's team introduces the strategy on their website with:

One Church - One Day provides a simple way for churches to pray together for our commu​nity in strategic and relevant ways. Each church takes one day every month to pray for 24 hours. This creates a church-led, year round, strategic prayer covering for our community. In other words, that's prayer on behalf of our community 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year!  Click here to go to One Hope's website.

In the read more section below I'll provide a link to this PDF report and you can visit their site for more of their personal testimonies click here.  Let's rejoice with them and remember that the testimony of Jesus, is the spirit of prophecy (Rev. 19:10).  If Christ did it here, He can do it in your community to.  Catch a vision!

One Hope's Two Year report of their employment of 1Church1Day (One Church One Day).

I love this report because it illustrates the "long term impact" of God's presence invited into a community. Click here to download One Hopes 2 Year Report in PDF. Now while we start by emphasizing the 7 spheres or 7 mountains the truth is, you can have as many or as few councils as you desire. In Lane County they choose 10 areas to focus their prayer on and as of today, there are actually 42 churches working together each month.

What's so cool is that One Hope did this "old school."
What do I mean by old school? They had to do the work and due due diligence to put the communication infrastructure in place in order to facilitate the prayer, praise, requests, reports, and serve the councils. My friends, this system works! The beauty of the app and the associated 1Church1Day Community Transformation System is that we are helping automate the process for you. We are going to offer two kinds of leagues.

1. Ambassador League - An ambassador league (you name your league) will incorporate the best of "old school" with new technology. They'll have access to all of the "old school" tried and true tools that have been used by ministries in over 38 nations for the last 12 years. Plus, we've found a way to offer the 1Church1Day app to your league and use it for directing your decrees, prayer targets and sharing your testimonies through the app. You'll use some of our old school systems and processes to handle your watchman reports, prayer requests, praise reports and council reports. This league is where everyone starts with a very low financial threshold to set this up. Watch for this to be rolled out in our app the first week of June.
2. Kingdom League - A kingdom league is for a church/ministry/city/network of churches who desire to utilize the full automated 1Church1Day Community Transformation System. It automates all of the old school systems and the beauty of it. It empowers the Church overseeing it to mobilize strategic prayer and action within 5 minutes. It provides a level of security and confidentiality which is key to serving high profile leaders in the 7 mountains and in your council teams. It offers calendars so every person can manage their watch schedule and there are ways for everyone to report what the see and hear. I love this because this system offers leaders a "virtual strategic command center" which we call a Leadership Dashboard for your league. This will also have your very own 1Church1Day apps associated with your league for your people. There is a significant cost to customize which we will discover what that is over the next several months. I'll share more about this soon.

Lessons Learned

1. This Kingdom Strategy Is Cross Cultural - While many are familiar with the Whatcom Story who began using this strategy in 2008 (ORT) or Lane County who began in 2015 there are a large number of communities who've employed with strategy who do not have websites and support like these two ministries do. We've seen churches impact communities and regions from Gainesville Florida, to Yakima Washington, to Kalamyo Myanmar, to Andra Pradesh India, to Lahore Pakistan, Kenya, Liberia, England, Romania, etc.
2. What is Needed to Start? - Leaders from the Church in a city, region, county, etc. who have responsibility because Christ called them. Leaders who are motivated by a kingdom heart. What do I mean by this? Leaders who recognize the Church is bigger than their ministry and they need to work with the other parts in that area. They often cry and pray for unity or that the Church would be one as Jesus prayed in John 17. People who are captured by a vision for building our Father's house of prayer continually. The most important element is the fire that burns within their heart we call love. Love for God, love for God's people, love for the lost and a desire to see Christ's love impact and transform their community. Bottom line, you supply the love and the territory and through 1Church1Day we can help you apply the wisdom of God to your passion to increase your effectiveness.
3. Honor - 1 Peter 2:17 says to "Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God and honor the king." It requires honoring God's word. In Acts 15:16 it says in the latter days that God would restore the tabernacle of David so the Gentiles might be saved. The tabernacle of David was marked by a system of teams who offered up 24/7 prayer all year long. It requires us to honor God's word when it comes to loving our brother and loving the lost. 1 Corinthians 12 makes is clear that there are many parts but one body and we need each other. It also requires that we honor jurisdictions. For example, our prayers are much more impactful when a leader with authority such as a mayor, police chief, fire chief, business man, pastor or bishop invite us in to pray. Finally we need to honor God's word when it comes to "doing" what His word says such as recording dreams, visions and words (Habakkuk 2:2), judging those words (1 Corinthians 14:29) and doing good strategic spiritual warfare through God's word (Psalm 68:11, 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 and 1 Timothy 1:18). It also requires honoring roles and gifts. God designed and gave certain gifts to perform certain functions. In every community where you see "long term results" you will also find a team or ministry who do what no typical church or pastor can do. They are uniquely gifted and called to mobilize and connect the body of Christ on a larger scale.
4. Faith in Action - James 2:17 says "Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." You can talk, dream, envision, strategize, pray, prophesy etc. but the bottom line it requires a leader or a handful of leaders with a gift of wisdom to begin to put their faith in action. 1Church1Day provides wisdom to start ..... but it requires a leaders motivated by the love of Christ to push through the pain, disappointment and challenges that arise. Candidly, the steps are simple. 1. Build the wall of prayer as one church takes one day 2. Set a watch 3. Form councils 4. The spiritual intelligence gleaned through prayer and these councils are shared with the leaders who then do just like King Hezekiah did in Ezekiel 37 when he laid the report from Isaiah and the enemy before the Lord and asked God what to do. It's simple! But simple does not mean easy. But the fruit is worth it.

1Church1Day is a strategy that empowers the Church in each city, county, region etc. to become like an author as they begin through prayer and strategic wisdom to write a new chapter of Church history in their region.

Lance is an acquaintance of mine and here is an article in Charisma News in which I shared through our Facebook.  It's because we are called to be salt and light and yet, in my opinion, many ministers today use a feigned wisdom that is merely a thinly veiled mask for fear. 

This is why they avoid addressing anything that is controversial.  I've chosen a different way. I purposely share controversial topics in order to demonstrate how God's word shapes my attitude and response to these things.  Oh on earth will we disciple nations if the Church avoids the controversies affecting nations? 

I'm not alone in this thinking. There are in fact many relatively UNKNOWN ministers who do. I highlight that to bring to light another aspect of this problem. 

Let me be clear. It's not just the minister's fault! It's the people who "love" the message that makes life easier for them.  Not all, but many, have become quite popular with large followings. The message of the cross is lost in a veiled sense of wisdom that teaches people a twisted view of love that is actually conflict avoidance. 

In the video associated with this article Lance shares that he has wondered why the Church, referring to its leaders, seem to have fallen silent since the election of Trump.  They are not addressing any of the moral issues, confronting corruption nor addressing lies. He shared some of the notes he took listening to some of our friends sermons. This provides the context for my comments on Facebook which I've shared below. 

My post on Facebook
I have some of the same friends Lance does and with regard to the 2nd point he makes, I have seen and agree with his conclusion.  One of my friends in ministry (well known, popular in a certain segment) said this on numerous occasions both privately and in settings where other ministers/pastors were being addressed publicly.  He said:

"I have both Democrats and Republicans in my congregation therefore there are certain issues we avoid."

 My thought's always been, so what?  What does a person's party affiliation have to do with the Truth we are charged to present.  
This is why I have actually chosen to model something different over the last number of years because "you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free."  This is why:

God has blessed my wife and I through the years with a variety of ministry relationships that God has used to mentor and disciple us. We've learned, that what you honor, you attract!  What you behold... you become! Matthew 23 and 1 Kings 13 also teaches us about the importance of the altar we sow in to!  

One of my most favorite books on this topic is "Purifying the Altar" written by our friend, mentor and one who serves on my accountability council, Al Houghton or Word at Work Ministries.  We are so thankful for the foundation God helped lay in our lives through him.  I wanted to share with you a letter he sent me last month because he shared three Biblical truths to encourage us and strengthen us.  I was so blessed, I wanted to share it with you. The three truths are found in:

• Mark 12:41        - the Lord sees our giving
• Matthew 25:40 - our giving is recorded eternally
• Luke 6:38          - Jesus rewards accordingly

The letter and Al's teaching is provided below.  I pray you are as blessed and encouraged as I was.  My friends, there is a reward. 

Matthew 13:3 says Jesus spoke in parables.  The Greek word translated parable in this scripture comes from the Strongs g3850. παραβολή parabolē.  A parable is a symbolic fictitious narrative or comparison.  It means placing one thing by the side of another or juxtaposition, as of ships in a battle metaphor.

Today I had lunch with an old friend who is a retired decorated Marine Corp Major who was an artillery officer in Vietnam.  He has been a great friend and ardent supporter of our ministry for years. He loves us and our vision but, he has not really understood the strategy.

That changed today as I showed him the app and the strategic leadership dashboard today. As I used his experience as an artillery officer to describe our the 1Church1Day Community Prayer Transformation System works I was inspired to write.
​
Following Jesus example, I’m going to use parables to describe how different aspects of 1Church1Day and the leagues work. This one is the first.

​Prayer is a powerful weapon if used well.  You can increase its power through:

1Church1Day is like the League of Nations and the National Football League.

The League of Nations was created after World War 1.  Nations agreed to collaborate together to seek peace by providing a way for other nations to resolve disputes.

The National Football League provides the structure that empowers teams to be created and play football together in the United States. The league provides the rules of play, referees who govern on the field during team play, identifies the different roles on each team such as coach, quarterback, wide receiver, guard, defensive end, defensive tackle, linebacker, etc.   Each team has an offense and a defense. Some players play both and others do not. Each team is self governing, self funding and unique yet they choose to play together and the league empowers them to do that.

League means agreement. In scripture the Hebrew word translated covenant most frequently can also properly be translated confederacy of league.  Leagues are used for all kinds of sports.  Leagues are most often identified by a sport, a territory, and or a group they serve.  The Pop Warner League empowers cities and towns to form a football league for youth starting at age 5.  As the leagues mature the skill and investment increases until they become financially self sufficient and in the case of some professional leagues prosperous.

Hear the Parables of the League of Nations & the National Football Leagues