One of the most important questions I’ve learned from my friend Josh David, from Proskuneo Ministries, is…

How your heart doing?

It’s a much better question to ask than, “How’s it going?”  I find that when I ask this question people launch into what activities are filling up their schedules.  This ranges from how work went to what their family did over the weekend to some movie they saw.

Nothing’s wrong with hearing about those things, but I feel like someone’s activities doesn’t necessarily reveal someone’s heart.  Do you know what I mean?

A person could be working all day at a job that they don’t enjoy, but what they’re really passionate about is painting.  Maybe another person you know puts on a happy face at church, but their father just passed away.

When my son was in the NICU

Over the summer my newborn son was rushed to the hospital and stayed in NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) for 15 days.  It was an extremely stressful time to say the least.

Funny thing is I still had worship rehearsal and I still went to church that Sunday.  I think a lot of people were surprised to see me there, especially since I sent an email the day we went to the hospital explaining what happened.

But in this crisis moment people were asking me how this event was affecting each one of us: myself, my wife, and my other son.

This was encouraging because when tragedy and emergencies occur it doesn’t just affect just the one person.  It really does affect everyone in the family and close friends.

What does this have to do with the multicultural church?

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times…RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPORTANT IN THE MULTICULTURAL CHURCH.

One of the ways we build those all important relationships are to find out what’s going on in people’s heart.  It requires us to ask in humility.  It requires us to take extra time to listen.

But if we’re going to build strong bonds with one another, move forward together, and do CHURCH together….then we’re going to have to ask this all important question:

How’s your heart doing?

Blog post by Peter Kihyun Park

© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.

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1. God looks at the heart and so should we
2. Breaking down the “With One Heart” album
3. Fifth Graders Rave About “Heart of the City”

In the past year I had been praying a lot about how to build community with my worship team at Aldrich Presbyterian.  We never seemed to have a good time to do it.

We had been spending so much time in the Scriptures before doing anything musical we didn’t have much time for anything else.  At the same time I had been praying about trying to figure a way to incorporate more prayer into our worship rehearsal.  Again, time was a factor.

Then one day God gave me some insight.  I felt like God was suggesting that we focus on the Scriptures one week and the next week we could focus on prayer.  That was a phenomenal idea.

This would give us one full hour focused on one thing before taking time to work on the service.

On August 16th, 2011

This night was the first time we would spend a full hour talking about prayer, sharing our prayer needs, and spending time in prayer.

One of worship team members actually asked me if we could simply do our prayer time in silence.  I replied with a quick no.  Why?

First, I didn’t want us to be distracted by our phones or text messages.  Secondly, I wanted us to pray out loud so that we could encourage one another.  And that’s exactly what happened.

I heard prayers from our worship team members that I hadn’t heard before.  People were vulnerable, affirming one another, and encouraging one another in prayer.  It was great.

And it seemed like after our prayer time like we had a greater sense of team, of community, and fellowship.

Questions for you

How can you incorporate more prayer with your worship team?  How can you encourage your team to pray out loud more?  What is the value of praying out loud?  How can you encourage your team to pray in their heart language during this time?

How have you seen God build community through prayer in your church?

Blog post by Peter Kihyun Park

© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.

Related posts:

1. Bridging the generational gap through prayer
2. I’ve been learning this about prayer – Part 2
3. What I learned about prayer from my friend Mariah

© 2011, Peter Park. All rights reserved.

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