The Church That Prays Together: Inside the Prayer Life of 10 Dynamic Churches

by Elmer L. Towns, Daniel Henderson, Ron Bennett

Experience the real-life stories of 10 churches that have been transformed by a pervasive culture of prayer. From large churches to small, these dynamic praying churches will inspire you as they share the principles they learned along the way.

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Dr. Elmer Towns is a college and seminary professor, an author of popular and scholarly works (the editor of two encyclopedias), a popular seminar lecturer, and dedicated worker in Sunday school, and has developed over 20 resource packets for leadership education. He began teaching at Midwest Bible College, St. Louis, Missouri, for three years and was not satisfied with his textbooks so he began writing his own (he has published over 100 books listed in the Library of Congress, 7 listed in the Christian Booksellers Best Selling List; several becoming accepted as college textbooks. He is also the 1995 recipient of the coveted Gold Medallion Award awarded by the Christian Booksellers Association for writing the Book of the Year, i.e., The Names of the Holy Spirit.

He was President of Winnipeg Bible College for five years, leading it to receive American Accreditation and Provincial authority to offer degrees (1960-1965). He taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in greater Chicago, Illinois, in the field of Religious Education and Evangelism (1965-1971).

He is co-founder of Liberty University, with Jerry Falwell, in 1971, and was the only full-time teacher in the first year of Liberty's existence. Today, the University has over 11,400 students on campus with 39,000 in the Distance Learning Program (now Liberty University Online), and he is the Dean of the School of Religion.

Dr. Towns has given theological lectures and taught intensive seminars at over 50 theological seminaries in America and abroad. He holds visiting professorship rank in five seminaries. He has written over 2,000 reference and/or popular articles and received six honorary doctoral degrees. Four doctoral dissertations have analyzed his contribution to religious education and evangelism.

His personal education includes a B.S. from Northwestern College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a M.A. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary also in Dallas, a MRE from Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, and a D.Min. from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Reviews

[Houseofsolace Emmanuel]

BOOK REVIEW: The Church that prays together.
A resourceful quick read that reveals the resultant effect of corporate praying borne out of a desire for a divine change! Authored by Elmer L. Towns & Daniel Henderson and published by NavPress.
Prayer is fundamentally that core nucleus any good Church is built upon. Whether you're a preacher, a bible teacher (though there are many ministers who shy off from praying, weirdly so!) and unequivocally so for all believers passionate about living as ambassadors for Christ here on earth. Thus prayer should be our lifeline!

The book highlights brief encounters and instances leading to the outburst of revival in notable churches, choirs, specialized ministries, and change-hungry individuals which we see doing well today. E.g. The Brooklyn tabernacle church, N.Y.C.
Like every careful student in the school of prayer that practise and understand the language of prayer; the authors' choice of ministries or churches used in the book were through random selection. These people never had special prayer formulas, any rigid prayer style, or some kind of magic wand that guaranteed speedy answers to prayers.
Instead, these great revivals and success stories simply had was the longing and thirsty desires to see God's Hand manifest in lives and over nations: not just for their personal ambitions!

A picturesque summary into the heart of a longing Christian’s soul as described in page 30 below, reveals the depth God looks for in His ‘pray-ers’ in other to 'do greater things'. This passion is resonated throughout the book.
"He often declares that He would rather die than simply go through the motion of socially acceptable and comfortable ministry routines"! –page 30.

I would gladly recommend this book as a handy reference guide for any aspiring and seasoned prayer warriors alike in their libraries.

[Adam Shields]

This is another quick read. Just over 100 pages. This book has a chapter for 9 churches and then a summary of a number of other church prayer programs. These churches are from a number of sizes and regions of the country. There isn't anything revolutionary about any of these churches except that the have intentionally put prayer as the primary focus of their church. These churches have been changed by their focus. It is good to remember that prayer should be a primary focus. For people that are interested in making prayer larger focus of their church it is a good book for ideas.

A longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/two-books-on-prayer-...