Urich prays for laborers,
great harvest
GREENSBORO, N.C. – Gary Urich, pastor of Southern Hills Baptist Church in Bolivar, came to the Pastors’ Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention with a burden to pray for one particular aspect of the theme, and because he was serving as secretary of the conference, his burden was projected throughout the Greensboro Coliseum.
Urich had spent a couple of weeks meditating on Matthew 9:37-38, where Jesus tells his disciples to pray for souls. There is a desperate need for true believers to cry out to the Lord for people to engage the unconverted with an eye on seeing the Savior regenerate them. Urich pinpointed the source of the problem that has been with the church from the beginning.
“The disconnect is really the fact that the harvest is great and the laborers are few,” Urich said.
After thanking the Lord for the opportunity to worship on the first day of the Pastors’ Conference, Urich drew a bead on this deadly plague.
“We’ve been blessed, challenged, encouraged and humbled,” he prayed. “O God we know that even in our own ministries there’s a disconnect. Father, we pray that somehow You’ll help us to make the connection again.”
A key to people doing just that is seeing the lost in their condition and trusting that God will shape his true believers to become more like Jesus, Urich said.
“I pray Your personal blessing on each and every pastor,” he prayed. “Lord, I pray you might give them a vision afresh, the Holy Spirit might move afresh in their lives, they might be more like Jesus—moved with compassion, that we might connect again, that we might win souls.”