by Diana Chandler

SPRINGDALE, Ark. (BP) — Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd has released a motivational tool book to help pastors and churches across the SBC engage in concerted prayer for the next great awakening in advance of the 2015 annual meeting in Columbus, Ohio.

Floyd announced the release of his ebook in a press conference call Wednesday (Nov. 19), joined by Southern Baptist editors, writers and state convention leaders. The announcement also marked the release of the annual meeting theme, “Great Awakening: Clear Agreement, Visible Union, Extraordinary Prayer,” based on Romans 13:11, for the June 16-17 gathering.

During the conference call, Floyd highlighted several recommendations from his ebook: intercessory prayer for pastors on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings in advance of weekly sermons; a month of preaching on the subjects of repentance, extraordinary prayer, revival, awakening and teaching on God’s word; the dedication of a full Sunday morning worship service to congregational prayer; a day of prayer and fasting in May, and attendance at the Columbus meeting.

Floyd’s ebook, “Pleading with Southern Baptists To Humbly Come Together before God in Clear Agreement, Visible Union, and in Extraordinary Prayer for the Next Great Awakening and for the World to Be Reached for Christ,” is available for free download at pray4awakening.com, sbc.net, RonnieFloyd.com, ibookstore.com and other sites. Additional tools and resources to promote the call to prayer are available on pray4awakening.com, including sermons from SBC pastors, encouraging pastors to learn from one another, Floyd said.

“I believe pastors need handles,” he said of the ebook. “I think sometimes we operate in generalities, like you should do this, or you should do that. But I also believe there’s historical precedence set in the awakenings, of them coming to agreement about a certain thing.

“I mean for example, let’s just say that a few hundred of our churches would really try their very best to have a month where they’re preaching on matters like repentance, and revival and awakening and reaching the world for Christ, and fasting and those kind of matters,” he said. “I mean that makes a major difference.”
Southern Baptists need to be in prayer for their churches, for their pastors, Floyd said. He called for three minutes of prayer each Saturday evening and Sunday morning for the anointing of God to come upon pastors as they preach His Word.

“I think we’ll have less conflict if we learn how to pray together,” he said. “And we’ll have a greater force of the Holy Spirit and His power in our churches if we pray regularly. And the sunrise and sunset is an image; that’s all it is. It’s a reminder to pray, either one or the other, when people get up or when they go to bed at night.”

During a press conference call from his office at Cross Church in Springdale, Ark, Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd unveiled his ebook and other tools to help pastors lead their congregations in concerted prayer for the next great awakening.

Floyd compiled the book in consultation with theologians and leaders across the SBC, and referenced such stalwarts as Billy Graham, Jonathan Edwards, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Jeremiah Lanphier, Charles Spurgeon, D.L. Moody and William Booth.
“Surely we can embrace with clear agreement that spiritual revival personally, spiritual revival in the church, and spiritual awakening in the nation are all needed so we can accelerate our pace in reaching the world for Christ,” Floyd wrote in the book. “Certainly we can deny ourselves, defer our own preferences, and visibly unite in extraordinary prayer for the next Great Awakening and for the world to be reached for Christ.”

At the multisite Cross Church in northwest Arkansas, where Floyd is pastor, he will reserve January and early February for sermons on repentance, extraordinary prayer, revival, awakening and reaching the world for Christ, as he is asking every pastor to do for one month between January and May, 2015.

“We will end that probably with our major prayer gathering on Sunday morning,” he said of Cross Church, “which we had one last October and it was incredible and blessed. And we will find a day, or we will just call our people to a day of fasting in the month of May.”

Floyd is accepting sermons from pastors and Christian leaders to post on the pray4awakening website. He also noted the June 16 evening service at the 2015 SBC annual meeting will be a nationwide prayer gathering, and he hopes to engage Southern Baptists in attendance in Columbus and at home.

Diana Chandler is general assignment writer/editor for Baptist Press, the Southern Baptist Convention’s news service. BP reports on missions, ministry and witness advanced through the Cooperative Program and on news related to Southern Baptists’ concerns nationally and globally.