Big Healing Book - Should We Have Intercessors Praying While We Do a Crusade?

Should We Have Intercessors Praying While We Do a Crusade?

It depends what you mean.

If the question is about the need to have a team of intercessors praying in a room somewhere the whole time you are doing a crusade, the answer is no, that is not a requirement to have good results at a crusade. As with all other questions of this nature, we turn not to experience but to the Bible as our sole source of doctrine. The Bible says that God sent His Word and healed them (Psalm 107:20), but it never says that He sent an army of intercessors and healed them. There is no record that Jesus or any of His followers considered it necessary to have “people praying in real time” while they preached. When Jesus sent people out, He sent them two by two to preach. He did not send them out five by five so that two could preach while the other three secretly interceded somewhere to “back” the first two.

I certainly think you should pray if you’re doing a crusade – not so that you can beg God to move, but so that you can hear any specific things God wants you to do so that you can be led by the Holy Spirit. Any others working with you should pray, too. But the Bible never mentions the need for dedicated intercessors whose job is to pray while others preach and minister. I see plenty of miracles without a team of such people, and so can you.

Paul prayed for the churches he started, just not in real time while he was preaching. It is fine to pray for people to whom you will minister before you do it, and I do that myself. Jesus spent a lot of time in prayer. So I’m certainly not discounting prayer. Notice, however, that Jesus still succeeded in His mission even when He asked His disciples to pray in the garden but they fell asleep instead. His success was based only on His prayer life in that case, not on his team’s prayer life.

Now if the question is about the need to have people who will pray with people who come forward with needs, that is a fine idea, as the Bible tells us to pray for one another in a general sense (James 5:16). “Altar workers” can do what cloistered intercessors can’t do – lay their hands on the sick. That is entirely within the purview of what we are all told to do (Mark 16:18).