The Community of the Cross “expanded” this last weekend to become a global prayer fellowship! The Holy Spirit worked to connect people in prayer from Western Canada, Eastern Canada, Alaska, the “lower 48” (that is the USA) and the United Kingdom!
Imagine a little piece of land – a few hundred square feet – in Taipei, Taiwan. On this little piece of land is a church with a small vibrant congregation. Now come back to that same small plot of land a hundred years later. The very same few hundred square feet has been expanded into thousands of square feet! And the church has grown to have hundreds of members with class rooms, several chapels, a large sanctuary, and many offices. How did all this happen? The miracle was “expanding the space” through building a 15-story building. Each floor multiplied the little plot of land.
And with the expanding of physical space there has also come an expansion of spiritual space and the working of the Holy Spirit. This is the story of Shuang-Lian Presbyterian Church that now has a remarkable ministry in downtown Taipei.
In the past, the means of “expanding space” where ministry could take place was through building buildings with more square footage or by adding satellite campuses. Now the Holy Spirit has a new building “medium” for expanding space in which ministry can take place. This new medium is the internet! Now, that may not be much of a revelation for those of you like my son who lives on “Facebook” and is fluent in the relational language of cyberspace – but to watch the Holy Spirit do this with us at the Community of the Cross was a gigantic step in expanding ministry.
Cindy Strickler deep in prayer at Community of the Cross Prayer Mountain. There was a small team who joined in the prayer work at the COC, but this was expanded to include many others through cyberspace.
The occasion was the Prayer Mountain, called at the Community of the Cross (COC), to intercede for the PRMI Discernment Plan, Process and Mobilization. We have been called into the process of going up the mountain to seek God’s guidance for the future. We have done many prayer events at the COC, but this was the first where we added streaming video, voice communications and email connecting participants scattered over a vast space in Canada, America and across an ocean to England. The ministry space of the Community of the Crosswas expanded by the Holy Spirit to connect us together to do the work of prayer.
Mary Ellen Conners and Joe Schlosser, members of the tech team, keeping up the computer connections so that intercessors from around the world could take part. Mary Ellen is receiving the emails in which guidance is being received. Joe is managing the video streaming and the voice communications so that we can see and talk to each other. The Holy Spirit is using this technology to enable us to engage in His work.
Seeing this happen, in our little place made immense through the addition of cyberspace, came as a strong confirmation that Jesus Christ wants to use every means available to us to do His work of witnessing to Him to the ends of the earth.
