Upcoming Trip
I feel like we have removed three tumors that I didn’t even know were there! – Unnamed. After a recent session.
The Prayer Resolution community is in the process of working with a worship school in a major city in China. There are 18 students who want to go through as many sessions of Prayer Resolution as possible over the next couple of months. One of the difficulties in this is that the majority of those people are men. Typically, men don’t participate in this sort of thing for whatever reason. This is great news that so many men want to do this! The problem is that most of the Safe Helpers that my dad has trained are women and they need more men to work with the men.
I (Nate) have been invited to go to China for three or so weeks to work through a translator doing Prayer Resolution with hurting ones. There are many things still up in the air (ticket, visa, and schedule) but we feel as if God has given me permission to go. We feel like it would be a great opportunity for personal growth in the area of working with other cultures, encouraging to be with family and helpful to those hurting ones who need sessions.
Prayer Requests:
- That God would work out: Ticket, Visa and Schedule
- That Nate would work well with a translator and within the Chinese culture.
- That Nate would endure being away from Michelle and Isaac for so long (he is also hoping to go do PR in Florida in Oct for two weeks).
- That Michelle would be able to spend that time with family and not feel horribly bored and left out.
- That Isaac would not do anything new developmentally without being caught on video for daddy.
Prayer Resolution
36 people are on our waiting list, wanting to receiving spiritual and emotional healing from their pasts. Half of the people on the list are from Substance, Nate’s church! But, instead of using the summer to start working with some of those people, God called the Banker’s up north to work at a summer camp.
What are you doing God?
Personally knowing some of the people who were waiting to start sessions, being gone at camp all summer was very tough for Nate. There were some who were really hurting and some who had been waiting for 2-3 years on the waiting list. Yes, that’s years! The harvest is truly plentiful and the workers are few. It didn’t seem like it could possibly be God telling them to go work at camp when there was such a need back in the cities, could it?
One of the things that God has been teaching us over the last few years is that the need is not the call, the call is the call. We simply can’t plan things out as well as He can, nor can we understand the many long lasting repercussions of all of our choices. But, the Bankers know the One who knows it all. Our primary responsibility is to listen to Him and respond.
Did you do any Prayer Resolution this summer?
Nate did get to work with one of his coworkers up at camp. They met for three or four sessions. It was really good and God was faithful to resolve some very significant things in his life. Nate also got to partner with another staff member at camp who is a PR Safe Other, doing a session with one of the non-coms he was mentoring.
How are you involved in Prayer Resolution now?
Currently, Nate is doing PR on Monday nights. They just started working two weeks ago and he is working with Amy Laurent who has been trying to get more experience as a Safe Other.
Next week Nate is starting a two-week blitz with a woman who is flying down from Canada for two weeks. She was so desperate for healing that she was willing to permanently postpone her wedding until she could go through PR! Now, there’s someone who’s ready!
How much Prayer Resolution have you done this year?
Nate has done over 350 hours of sessions this year so far. He has worked with at least 10 different people and seen 4 people complete their lives. Prayer Resolution is the primary ministry that Nate is focusing on this year.
Nate also taught 53 hours of class, training more Safe Others. Outside of the official PR class, he has taught the Forgiveness class over 5 times in different settings/churches.
What’s happening with Prayer Resolution in general?
We are starting to have monthly PR leader’s meetings and quarterly Safe Other meetings to increase unity, community and mentorship within the ministry.
There is a new website being developed for Cross Resources, a number of logos being developed (the logo you saw was one of the options, but not formalized) and questionnaires being sent out. We are starting to add much needed structure to help facilitate the relationships that we need for this ministry to function.
Nate may teach a small class this fall, training more Safe Others, if there is enough interest. He is focusing on people who want to join the ministry or have already gone through their lives.
We are working towards having Richard and Connie come up to Minneapolis to do a training in the March/April time frame. We are hoping to do a professional recording of their teaching.
Immerse Discipleship Community
For the first time since its formation in 2012, Nate was going to be completely removed from the discipleship community that he co-founded. What was going to happen in his absence? How was God going to prove his faithfulness?
It was tough!
Leaving to go up to Camp Nathanael for the summer was not easy at all. Immerse had split into two separate groups for the first time, segregating by gender for the summer. The men’s group was going to be lead by a committee of 4-5 men who had been a part of Immerse for some time now. Nate had been the primary leader of the group for so long that it was a personal struggle for him to trust God at work through the other men.
Were you involved at all?
Nate got the opportunity to teach at the first men’s group meeting of the summer, teaching on forgiveness, and the last, teaching on the Kingdom. It was his pleasure to attend two other meetings, one of which his Dad taught on creation-level identity.
Where is Immerse now?
That’s a good question! Just a few weeks ago he wouldn’t have been able to give even a slightly informed answer. Having just returned from a weekend retreat with Immerse at Wilderness Fellowship Nate seems to have gotten caught up with things. The fall cohort is starting on Sept 18th. This fall Immerse hasn’t had another huge explosion of participants like we did this summer (30-40 people involved in Immerse this summer!) so we are trying to focus heavily on investing in our leaders and current participants. We are intent on focusing on the individual. As individuals are healed, discipled and learn to hear the voice of God, our city will transform. One person at a time.
How involved will you be this fall?
Nate is planning on being fairly involved on Wednesday nights, but hasn’t gotten clear direction yet as to what that looks like. For starters, he will be teaching a class on forgiveness on the first night of the new cohort. He is unsure if he will be discipling anyone personally or not.
Michelle has had a hard time going to Immerse with Isaac. He is much more mobile, vocal and restless than when we were able to bring him wrapped up in our arms where he’d sleep through the whole meeting this last spring. We will either need to trade off watching him or start thinking about baby sitters.
What’s on the horizon for Immerse?
Immerse is on the edge of applying to become a non-profit. We have dreams of having our own benevolence fund to care for our people and eventually training up, sending out and being a primary donator for part and full-time missionaries. With this would come a branch of Immerse with the sole purpose of training up missionaries.
