An impassioned Archbishop Raffel has led the diocesan fellowship in prayer at a large meeting in St Andrew’s Cathedral as well as in parish churches.
Morning church services across Sydney and the Illawarra either saw a video of the Archbishop leading in prayer or read the text of his prayer for the spread of the gospel across the diocese.
Later, representatives from all regions of the diocese gathered in the Cathedral.
Above: Anglicans from all over Sydney and the Illawarra came to pray.
“The whole church is called to pray – do you believe that?” asked the Archbishop as he preached from Colossians 4 at the start of the ‘Before the Throne’ prayer meeting.
“Paul says, be devoted to prayer. If you are devoted to anything, you know what it looks like. You give time to what you are devoted to, you give energy and enthusiasm to it, you learn the habits, practices and skills of what you are devoted to. You establish goals and targets for it, you give yourself wholeheartedly to it.
And the apostle says to the Colossian Christians and to every generation of Christians since, be devoted to prayer!”
I have asked all the churches of our Sydney Anglican fellowship – from Berowra Waters to Ulladulla, Lithgow to Leichhardt; from Balgowlah to Bowral; from Stanhope Gardens to Strathfield to Surry Hills, from Pymble to Picton and everywhere in between – to spend some time in each of today’s services praying for the spread of the gospel.
One Day, together in Prayer
Archbishop Raffel, Sunday, May 4.
To the hundreds in the Cathedral, the Archbishop urged prayerfulness, and offered reasons why we often don’t pray.
“We are not devoted to prayer because we think, ‘we can do it’. Jesus says, ‘I will build my church’ but we think, ‘we will build the church’. We don’t pray, because we think we will do it. We’ll do it by the force of our logic or the depth of our scholarship, we’ll do it by the eloquence of our preaching or the dignity of our liturgy, or the spontaneity of our liturgy; or the solemnity of our tradition or the informality of our worship; we’ll do it by the right marketing strategies or the right corporate structure or the right evangelistic tool or the correctness of our politics. And we do not pray because we will do it.”
But after the rebuke, which he also directed to himself, Archbishop Raffel encouraged the crowd to keep going in prayer.
Above: One of the small groups praying in Mandarin.
He spoke of the one thousand people being followed up after the recent series of evangelistic meetings in Wollongong. “The churches started to pray when they started to plan – 18 months before,” he said. “Praying that people would accept invitations to attend. Praying that the Lord would open the hearts of people to receive the message in repentance and faith. And God heard the prayers of his people…Praise the Lord!”
As the congregation broke up into smaller groups for prayer, the Archbishop shared a very personal motivation for his prayers.
“I’ve shared before how grateful I am, that when I was fourteen a friend of mine who had become a Christian told me in the school yard one day that he was praying for me. Seven years later, when the Lord saved me by his grace, and I went with Stuart to his church, his friends said to me, Kanishka, we’ve been praying for you for years.”
Pray with us
Watch the video below and pray with the Archbishop for the spread of the Gospel.