Ministry Update: Forerunner Music Academy and TPR 2.0

On February 17, 2019February 19, 2022 By CaitlynIn Ministry Life

Once a month, I send newsletters to my ministry partners (learn how to partner with me here!) about my life as a full-time intercessory missionary at The Prayer Room Missions Base, and I’ll be posting a few highlights from these letters on Fragrance Arise.

February feels like the month 2019 really got into full swing. We launched our part-time Forerunner Music Academy (FMA) and at the same time launched a massive ministry reset dubbed TPR 2.0!

Forerunner Music Academy at TPR

The Prayer Room has the distinction of being the first IHOPU FMA partner school in the United States! We are using IHOPU curriculum and have been trained in the teaching methods of IHOPU. To spearhead this school, we currently have two IHOPU externs, Tyler and Daniel! Tyler is a current senior in IHOPU’s full-time FMA in Kansas City, and Daniel is an IHOPU FMA 2018 graduate. Both of them are incredible and have stepped so beautifully into serving and doing life with this community. They have been leading, administrating, and teaching like pros and we are so grateful for them.

The school runs on Saturdays for 14 weeks and includes training in piano, guitar, voice, harp and bowl, and theology, as well as Encounter service and 6 hours in the prayer room. We have 22 students, and all of them are so hungry and excited to encounter God and strengthen their skills. Most of them have little to no previous music experience, but they’re going to be able to play worship songs by the end of this semester!

Two of our students in particular came to us in the craziest ways. Brie was in Orlando when she met Brad at a conference. He mentioned our FMA, God gripped her heart, and within a WEEK, she uprooted her entire life and moved here. Sebastian is a freshman at Texas A&M in College Station — about 3 hours south of Dallas. He drives up every weekend to attend our church and take this school. I’m so excited for how both of them, as well as our other students, are saying yes to the call of God on their hearts!

TPR 2.0

The Prayer Room is also launching a fresh re-emphasis on our core mandates with several new components to our weekly activities. We’re calling it “TPR 2.0.” Interestingly, this coincided with similar shifts throughout the prayer movement. IHOPKC’s “Reset” for many of the same reasons is the most well-known, but as we’ve heard from house of prayer leaders throughout the nation we’ve found that God is doing the same thing everywhere. He’s refocussing us on keeping the “first things first” and stirring up a deeper sense of family. In most places, this shift started independently, without talking to other ministries.

At The Prayer Room, we have launched:

PRAYER FOR REVIVAL – We believe that God wants to do more in our region than He is currently doing, and in part that’s because He’s waiting for the intercessors to cry out to Him for revival. Accordingly, we’ve added a cycle of intercession for revival to around 30 devotional (worship only) prayer meetings from 9am-5pm every day. That’s a LOT more intercession happening on a weekly basis!* I blogged on Wednesday about praying for leaders to be aligned with God for revival during this intercession time.

REVELATION TEACHING – When The Prayer Room began, God gave us a clear word about focussing on Jesus’ return, and we want our community to get firmly grounded in the study of the end times all over again. We’re taking 2 years to go through the book of Revelation in our weekly services, with discussion groups immediately after each teaching, and we’re being very intentional about engaging and following up with visitors in the groups. You can follow along with us on our Facebook page or on our recent messages page.

CONNECT NIGHTS – To break up the intensity of the Revelation study and to help our community thrive, we’re going to have a community “connect night” every two months in place of our Saturday night service. Next week, we’re watching The LEGO Movie with “extreme popcorn”!

To hear our director Brad Stroup cast vision for TPR 2.0, check out the Facebook video of Encounter service that night.

I am so excited about all three of these components. I love the added energy of the revival intercession times, and I love the format of the Revelation teaching. It’s so much fun to see eschatological newbies become encouraged that Revelation isn’t meant to be scary and they really can study it and discover the beauty of Jesus in the climax of history. Breakthroughs of fresh clarity are already occurring; this is going to strengthen our community so much these next two years!

*I bet some of you harp and bowl junkies are really curious as to how we’re doing cycles of revival prayer during devotionals in a simple and sustainable way! Here’s what it looks like in our prayer room:

At the midpoint of the set, the usher chooses a prayer topic related to revival. We have about 20 options preset on slides that the usher can choose from. They announce the topic on the mic and invite anyone who wants to sit in the open mic seats to pray for this topic. (Staff are required to pray.)
The usher prays for the topic. They can pray a short rapid fire prayer, a longer apostolic prayer, or anything in between. The worship leader sings a chorus based on their prayer.
Anyone else may pray on the mic next. Again, they may pray long or short, with or without a verse. This sets the bar low and makes it easy for anyone to engage.
After ALL the people have prayed, the worship leader sings a chorus, usually the same chorus again.
That’s it! Usually it takes 5-10 minutes. It requires very little training, and it can be done even if there are only a worship leader and an usher in the room. This is how we are following the Spirit’s nudge to be more intentional about daily praying for revival in our region.

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TPR Staff Retreat 2017!

On November 12, 2017January 6, 2019 By CaitlynIn Ministry Life

The annual The Prayer Room staff retreat is our highlight of the year. We rent a huge house on a beautiful property about an hour away in Rainbow, TX, and we spend the weekend playing games, vision casting/discussing, and generally enjoying each other’s company. One of the beautiful strengths of TPR is the close-knit family feel of the community, and the annual staff retreat is a big part of fostering that. This was my third staff retreat in a row! (Check out 2015 and 2016.)

During our living room sessions, we discussed taking ourselves seriously as a house of prayer before the Lord and how rare and precious it is that He has given us the grace to sustain daily prayer for 12 years! As of last month, we passed 45,000 hours total of live prayer since our inception in 2005! That’s a culmination of five years of incense arising from our prayer room!

One discussion that really provoked and excited me was our Saturday night talk about what we could each do to make The Prayer Room better 1% at a time. We dreamed together and then made action plans to establish those plans. “What can we do to get the cords behind the sound booth more out of the way?” “I know a way to do that. Done.” “What else could we do to recruit worship leaders?” “We could make small flyers to put on our welcome desk directing people to our website.” “I can design and print some up. Done.” We talked about stepping it up, individually and as a staff, to be more proactive about our responsibilities and “raise the water level” of prayer and worship engagement in our prayer room. At the end of the day, all the clever admin solutions we come up with are about strengthening the atmosphere of prayer and worship that happens 18 hours a day in our prayer room.

I love this staff so much and am so grateful that I get to build the house of prayer with such a family!

Livermore Update

On October 31, we finally finished selling the house on Livermore Dr. that has served as our dorm for the past several years! Originally, this house was purchased to be the prayer room when the meetings outgrew Brad’s living room. When we moved into a storefront space on Pioneer Pkwy., Livermore became remodeled as a guys’ side/girls’ side dorm building. This is where I lived in 2015 on my externship. The house has some significant structural issues and we were losing money on it for months, and we’re so glad to turn the keys over to someone who can turn it into something useful to them so we can move on to a better dorm situation.

Now, we’re looking for one or more duplexes (or even a fourplex, if we can find one) where we can house externs, interns, staff, and guest speakers as needed. I was asked to move in as house manager, and after weeks of prayer and consideration, I said yes. It will be much cheaper rent and it will be an opportunity to live with and serve other staff (my current roommates both left staff to go back to school earlier this year). I’m praying that the dorm would be a consecrated place where we can provoke each other in love and pursue Jesus together. It’s going to be an exciting transition!

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What I’m Praying: Refreshing

On October 18, 2017December 2, 2018 By CaitlynIn What I'm Praying2 Comments

Continuing my What I’m Praying series…

The past few weeks, TPR has been focussed on praying for a time of deep refreshing to come to our community. This has been our rapid fire topic at the end of every set.

To be honest, it’s been an exhausting year. Many people feel a bit dry and dull and just soul-weary. We need a good strong “time of refreshing” (Acts 3:20) from the Lord to revive our hearts. Living dry is no fun.

It’s true that most of life is lived in the mundane. Most of the time, we’re neither on the mountaintop nor in the depths of despair; rather, we’re sort of on the plateau of daily walking out life with God, trying to stay obedient and faithful no matter how we’re feeling.

But we don’t want to just be okay with not encountering God.

We’re asking God for a season of refreshing, that as individuals and as a community we would receive an increased touch of the Holy Spirit.

This past week, I believe we’ve started to see glimpses of that. On Saturday night, Brad was called last minute to attend a meeting, so instead of him continuing our teaching series, our weekly Encounter service became a prayer meeting with extended worship for exactly this topic of refreshing. We asked God to move in signs and wonders and to refresh us with an increased manifestation of His presence. The corporate nature of that prayer meeting, with all of us in the room joined with fervor and unity, and the worship team’s excellent prophetic leadership, definitely brought refreshing to our hearts. With the leanness of our 18/7 schedule right now, we’re not able to have those experiences together very often.

Also, on Sunday night a prayer group from a local Messianic congregation visited the prayer room. Almost 30 ladies joined us for an hour or so, and God really moved among them. Our worship leader felt a strong prophetic nudge to spontaneously lead a ministry time from the prayer mic (don’t worry, the usher took his seat so the stage wasn’t empty) and give a call for anyone who felt called to missions. The room was deeply touched and many responded. That kind of move of the Spirit is the kind of thing we’re praying to see more of.

Please join us in praying that God would refresh us with a fresh wave of His Spirit!
God, thank You for Your presence here – please increase our experience of Your presence. Open the heavens and send another wave of Your Spirit to refresh, awaken, and revive us. We’re crying out for fresh fire. Meet us in our hunger as You’ve promised.

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Summer Fun and a Testimony!!

On July 22, 2017January 6, 2019 By CaitlynIn Ministry Life

July has been a fun month for me. I spent Independence Day at a pool party/BBQ with several families with young kids. One Saturday several of us went on our annual TPR Community Trip. We took a day trip down to the Austin area to go tubing on the San Marcos River, swim in a natural water hole called Blue Hole, and get pizza and coffee in the city. The river was GORGEOUS with perfect 90 degree weather!

The next day I spent my 27^th birthday section leading (managing/overseeing) the prayer room from 5am-11am, then finished the day with church and teacher equipping group. Three Sundays out of the month, all of the teaching staff at The Prayer Room get together at Brad’s house to study and discuss certain topics so that we can get more clarity and grounding for future teachings. So even though my birthday itself wasn’t extravagantly commemorated, I loved spending it with close friends at the prayer room and at church, and felt very much loved and celebrated.

TESTIMONY TIME!!

Last week, Joshua, one of our interns/worship leaders/staff members, shared this incredible testimony (he’s from Yorkshire, so enjoy the British-isms!).

During my worship set tonight God gave me prophecy about a lad who came in. God began to break things off of him… He had once said a prayer, then lived a life contrary to his words… He felt a need to come to a house of prayer…

Afterwards we spoke and… he said he could feel presence of God. I had several words of knowledge about his life and God gave me the number of his birthday.
He repented and renounced several things and right there he gave his life to Jesus! Confessed about having cigarettes, which Holy Spirit had already showed me he had…

Went to his vehicle to get them and threw them in skip outside TPR. Asked him about following his commitment with baptism to which he adamantly wanted to do. Went to Lincoln Square fountain that we have used before for baptisms. He went under, joined with Jesus’ death and raised to new life speaking in new tongues! Praise You and thank You, Jesus!

New Rapid Fire Prayer Topic

At the end of every set, everyone in the room lines up at the mic to pray short “rapid fire” prayers on a certain topic, usually related to something happening within the ministry. The past few weeks, as I shared before, our topic was for finances for a new A/C for our upstairs preschool room. That process has progressed, and WE GOT THE MONEY WE NEEDED, PRAISE GOD! Now, our topic is:

Praying for the workers we are hiring to fix the upstairs A/C units to be able to make the needed repairs for a reasonable amount and to get them up and running quickly.

We need inexpensive, clever solutions and discounts on units that won’t fall apart. Please pray with us for wisdom and favor as we get these units installed!

God, thank you for Your provision! Please finish what You started, have Your hand on the workers, and give us favor in the repair/installation process!

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My First Week on Staff

On January 26, 2017January 6, 2019 By CaitlynIn Ministry Life5 Comments

It’s been eight days since I arrived in Arlington, TX, to join staff at The Prayer Room Missions Base. Since then, I’ve done a lot of moving in (I bought a desk, dresser, bookcase, and nightstand for $200 using the Offer Up app!) and have been getting settled into my new role at The Prayer Room.

I’m the Internship Coordinator for our Immerse internship, and that role will expand to cover our other internships and schools as the Forerunner Equipping Center (the school branch of The Prayer Room) grows. Immerse is a part-time 14-week internship for young adults (we have interns age 17 through mid-30s) designed to help them grow in a life of prayer, go deep in study of the Word, and get connected in like-minded community. I serve by keeping track of attendance, assignments, tuition, teaching schedules, etc, and I’m the point person for any questions or situations that arise. I’m also teaching several class sessions – TPR Base Distinctives, Night & Day Prayer as a Vocation, Cultivating a Life of Prayer, and Intro to the Book of Revelation.

Immerse day 1! — Immerse day one on January 9!

My weeks are pretty full, mostly with the prayer room. I have 30 hours a week in the prayer room divided into 2-hour sets; 5 of those sets (10 hours) are spent leading devotional worship sets on keys. Many of those sets are also spent ushering and/or section leading – welcoming visitors and making sure all the worship transitions happen smoothly, etc. I’m at The Prayer Room six days a week; I have Mondays off.

I also have 15 hours a week devoted to my admin responsibilities and serving around the base in various ways. Those hours are pretty flexible. This week, my service hours have consisted of serving the internship both in classes and in admin, leading extra worship sets, ushering extra sets, and meetings.

I’m also attending Forerunner Fellowship, a local church where many people from The Prayer Room attend and serve. Last week our Sunday service became a 50-minute prayer meeting for God to pour out His Spirit on our congregation. It’s an honour to be running with such hungry compatriots!

It’s so wonderful to be back with friends that I’ve grown to love so much over the past year and a half! Last night my house hosted a cereal themed game night in honour of my moving in; everyone brought their favourite cereal to share, then I killed everyone at Pit (which NEVER happens!) and my fellow new full-time missionary Chris killed the rest of us at Farkle, by approximately a bajillion points (except for Josh, who was right on his tail). The night before I took the interns out for milkshakes, then met up with a whole crew of TPR ladies at Cheesecake Factory to celebrate the one and only Mykah’s birthday.

I know most of you don’t know any of these people, but I want you to know that I know them, and love them dearly, and we have a lot of fun together.

So many exciting things are happening and about to happen at The Prayer Room. It finally feels like a season of mostly good news, which is quite a change around here! Good stories are coming; stay tuned!

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TPR Staff Retreat 2016

On November 12, 2016January 6, 2019 By CaitlynIn Ministry Life3 Comments

Guess what – I spent last week in Texas! I flew out to be part of The Prayer Room’s annual staff retreat, and it was a very welcome time of refreshing and re-envisioning.

On Friday we drove out to a huge retreat house on a farm. We spent the weekend playing games (Farkle, Pit, and Silent Football are always huge hits!), eating food, and generally enjoying each other’s company as a family. We also did some teambuilding games (which may or may not have drawn out the spirit of competition moreso than cooperation!), toasted marshmallows around a bonfire while retelling funny stories from the early days of the ministry that have become community classics, and met in the living room every morning and evening for prayer, discussion, vision casting, and individual encouragement.

14900370_10105090428936640_5067834837550986851_n — Teambuilding. We were connected in a long line with our ankles tied together.

14962592_10105090428442630_4816515315211210604_n — Twinning with my dear friend and fellow IHOPU grad Rhoda!

2016-11-09-15-54-44 — The dice game Farkle was a favourite pastime. I’m in the plaid on the right behind Brad. In my first game I didn’t get ANY points, and in my second game I got over 8000.

The cavalry is here! — While we were gone, IHOPU sent one of its best student worship teams to run our prayer room and our Saturday night service. God bless these guys for keeping the fire on the altar and serving with such joy and faithfulness!

I am so, so blessed to be a part of this family. I love that God has allowed me to visit five times since I finished my externship there last year. Next time I’m back in January, it will be to STAY!! God has entrusted The Prayer Room with a powerful mandate to build night and day prayer and worship until His return, and I’m so excited and honoured that He has invited me to join them.

This is a crew of people who passionately and sacrificially follow the call of God and pour out everything for His glory. They honour Him and each other so well, even in the midst of deep struggles that would tear many other ministries apart. The humility and zeal for truth I’ve seen in this community provoke me frequently to step up my game and lean on Jesus more and let Him transform me into His likeness. I’m eternally grateful that in calling me to leave all I have known in California, my Father has given me these people as family.

2016-11-07-12-02-22 — My beloved TPR staff family!

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The Power of Coffee and Awkward Conversations

On June 29, 2016January 5, 2019 By CaitlynIn Just Thoughts15 Comments

I really didn’t want to talk to her about this.

I had already made small efforts to smooth things over, but I still hadn’t just sat down, looked her in the eye, and said what I needed to say.

We used to be quite close, but enough had changed that I didn’t know what to expect. The truth is, I was afraid. I was afraid of awkwardness, of saying it wrong, of not hearing the response I wanted to hear… of being hurt again.

It took strong prompting from people whose wisdom I trust to get me to ask her to coffee. We went to a local cafe, I bought her a latte, we made very friendly small talk that felt like old times… then I took a deep breath and carefully broached the subject.

Over the next hour, we talked, listened, shared our hearts, laughed, affirmed and encouraged each other, and hugged. By the time I walked out of that coffee shop, my heart felt a thousand times lighter. I drove away enthusiastically gushing to God, “Yes!! This is what it’s supposed to be like! Thank You for unity, humility, and RECONCILIATION in Your people!”

This will probably shock people who’ve known me for longer than five or six years, but I can honestly say that at this point in my life, I am a huge fan of awkward conversations. Preferably over coffee.*

I think this is because I hate division. I really, really, really hate division. I hate when people who ought to be showing the love of Christ to each other can’t bring themselves to just lay the awkwardness on the table and deal with it. I hate it when someone I really do like and respect can’t bring him- or herself to make things right with me. Some things are better left unsaid, but many times, unspoken words fester like a wound that won’t heal.

I’ve actually been on the receiving end of these “awkward conversations” toward reconciliation more often than I have initiated them, and I can tell you, I’ve always walked away with more respect for the other person and feeling like a wall had been broken down. Every time, when the conversation is approached with love, tenderness, honesty, and humility, I know God is rejoicing with us.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God… So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
(Matthew 5:9, 23-24)

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.”
(Colossians 3:12-15)

“If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.”
(Romans 12:18)

We’re a family. We’re one body in Christ. We have no right to let unspoken words build up walls between us. Love and unity is our mandate, and I’m determined to fight for it – Every. Single. Time.

So if you need to initiate an “awkward conversation” with someone, here’s my advice:

PRAY. Get God’s heart for the situation. Ask Him for love to abound (Philippians 1:9).
If you can without breaking anyone’s confidence, talk to someone you know will give you wise counsel and pray with you before the conversation takes place.
If at all possible, ask if you can take them out for coffee (or tea, or fro-yo, or whatever). Avoid the “business meeting” feeling. Let them know that you value spending time with them.
Don’t launch right in. Chat, ask questions, show interest in their life and heart outside of this one issue. This is part of loving and honouring them well.
Share your feelings as simply, honestly, and tenderly as possible. Ask forgiveness in any area you can think of.
Embrace the awkwardness. Laugh about it! They’re probably as uncomfortable as you are. Acknowledging it robs it of its power.
Ask questions and listen. Let them say whatever they want. The goal is mutual understanding for the sake of unity.
Encourage the other person! Tell them what you love about them. Affirm what you see God doing in their life.
Don’t be paranoid about saying everything exactly right. The point is to expose what’s been hiding. It’s okay if it’s a messy process.
GO LOW. Humility is your best friend. Humility will win the war when every other weapon fails.

It’s amazing how much healing can come from a cup of coffee and open communication soaked in love, humility, and honour.

So go forth and be boldly awkward for the sake of unity, my friends!

*I love the cultural phenomenon that is “going out for coffee” together with someone, but I’m actually not a huge coffee person, so if you ask me out for coffee, I’m probably going to just drink tea.

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Farewell Camp, Hello Summer!

On June 16, 2013January 5, 2019 By CaitlynIn Personal Updates1 Comment

Hellllloooooo, Rancho Cucamonga! I got home from camp just over a week ago on Friday, June 7. Since then, I have:

Watched almost a full season of Heroes on Netflix.
Deep cleaned my room and given away bag after bag of clothes and fabric. (I LOVE simplifying my life!! Occasionally I would go on rants about materialism, and then start throwing things out of my closet. It was magnificently freeing.)
Crafted more handmade vintage-y greeting cards which will very soon be selling on my new etsy store! (Official announcement pending)
Babysat twice and have set up dates for more.
Officially made Refuge House of Prayer my home church!

I did not get the “ideal” summer job I had been hoping for. I was a little bummed, but I have concluded that God was protecting me from an overcrowded schedule. My first priority this summer needs to be my online IHOPU classes. As it is, I have arrangements for babysitting over the summer for a number of families. I will be very busy the next two months, that’s for sure.

As excited as I am to be home for a few months, it’s also rather difficult to leave my camp. Summer camp 2010 was my first full-time job. I’ve spent large portions of the past three years there, totaling about 16 months. I’ve learned and grown so much. From general leadership skills like initiative to flexibility to guest service skills like saying “yes” (whenever feasible) to outdoor science school skills. I am now the master of dozens of different ways to get and keep attention, teach about the environment, survive (theoretically) in the wilderness, keep kids busy kids with a game, etc. Throw me on the trail with 20-30 5th graders, and I will be completely in my element.

And even beyond all those handy professional skills, I grew a lot relationally. Since I never lived on campus during college, camp was my first real communal living experience. I’m a solid introvert with a tendency toward isolationism, so being “forced” to “do life” with so many people was just what I needed. The teamwork, fun, and fellowship has been simply wonderful. I love these people so much and will always treasure the memories I’ve built with them.

I’ve also learned how to intentionally carve out time for God. I had to do it at APU, but it got harder at camp. That’s why the camp prayer chapel and a couple of other lookout locations have become so precious to me. I’ve met with God there, because I’ve determined to set aside time and treat them like appointments that must be kept. The key is intentionality and priority. It’s planning ahead and putting my Bible in my backpack (even if it means I end up hiking the mountain with it for half a day). It’s taking advantage of small – or large – blocks of time. If I want to spend time with God, then I’ve got to fight to make sure that happens when no one else will do it for me.

The mountains have bewitched me, body and soul. I see God in them every time I look around. I see him when I marvel at the rugged, delicate, colourful, brilliant beauty of this world. Golden, flaming sunsets. Leaves rustling in the breeze. The rich petrichor smell of the forest in the rain. Colours, shadows, textures, shades of life. So much depth and creativity… they all reveal the heart of the Artist.

Those three years were one of the best gifts my Father has ever given me.

Now, Rancho. Family. Home. And classes… SEEP starts tomorrow. I’m going to be throwing myself into studying the Bible at a level I never have before. I’ve sat through classes at OTI, but there was no homework. I’ve done Bible classes at APU, but that was APU, not IHOPU.

This is going to be a summer to remember.

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