SBC 2023: SBTC pastors share prayer testimonies with national audience - TEXAN Online
NEW ORLEANS--Amidst a sea of chatter and conversations about ministry in the hours prior to the opening gavel of the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, First Baptist Church Forney Senior Pastor Nathan Lino made it clear how churches from Texas to Taiwan will experience the movement of God they so desperately seek.
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"You have to believe that leading the church to pray together is the activity of first importance," Lino said during a panel discussion held Monday in the annual meeting's exhibit hall. "We're going to build our church on sound doctrine and the true gospel, but the activity of first importance has to be that we're going to seek the presence of God. ... Without the manifest presence of God, the rest we're doing is in the flesh and is completely ineffective."
The Power in the Prayer Meeting panel also included Todd Kaunitz, lead pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church in Longview, and Robby Gallaty, senior pastor of Long Hollow Church in Hendersonville, Tenn. Kie Bowman, pastor emeritus of Hyde Park Baptist & The Quarries Church in Austin, moderated the panel aimed at helping pastors create a culture of prayer in their churches and design an effective prayer meeting.
Bowman--who is assisting the SBC Executive Committee in developing a national prayer strategy--explained that all three pastors have experienced "significant spiritual awakening like we only read about and dream about" in their churches. Those movements of God, he said, were precipitated by each pastor making prayer a priority in his personal life and church over the past couple of years.
Before that happened, Gallaty, Lino, and Kaunitz said they had to weather a personal season of brokenness that the Lord used to help them understand their need for Him at the center of their lives and ministries. Those seasons were marked by jealousy, arrogance, pride, joyless service, and desperation. Lino said he was so despondent at one point, "I was praying every day for God to bring me home."
Said Gallaty: "Brokenness is the pathway to breakthrough."
After personally turning their hearts back to the Lord in prayer and then leading their churches to do the same, the pastors testified about seeing God do things they had never seen. Gallaty said more than 1,000 people at Long Hollow were baptized within a 15-week period. Lino said since last Aug. 15, his church has seen 962 people saved. Kaunitz has previously said hundreds in his church have been saved, baptized, or experienced personal renewal and restoration.