JEFFERSON CITY—The demand for what Bob Loggins, Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) prayer and spiritual awakening specialist, does in ministry continues to increase, causing him to fall back even more on the Lord for help.
Last year Loggins connected with 500 people through his Journey House of Prayer workshops. This year’s total through March was that and more. The focus for these times in places like Lebanon, Willard, Edwards, and Ballwin is not programmed or systematized but is built around the simple idea that God is holy.
“It’s about a tool in the hands of God,” Loggins said. “That’s what it’s all about—serving the Lord and serving God’s people, and then being able to genuinely deal with one’s own personal sins, and to be honest with people about how good we are not. I consider myself to be the least among the least before the Lord, and truly the most unworthy to be able to do this work before the Lord.”
Loggins does not like to do an event.
“What we’ve been trying to do is not call what we do events,” he said. “They’re encounters and experiences.
“An event comes and goes. It’s on a calendar. It has a starting point and an ending point. That’s an event. An encounter has a starting point, but it doesn’t end. An experience has a starting point, and it doesn’t end.
“An encounter may begin at a particular time, but the outgrowth of that encounter is really demonstrative of the results of the transformed life. What fruit of the spirit is being exhibited? What kind of life changes happened? And this occurs over the course of time. So we’re looking at what did God do in the encounter from what we can see, and then what are we anticipating God to do, and then what is God doing based on what we see Him doing as opposed to what we think we thought we felt. It’s taking us out of the picture and putting God into the picture.”
One of the pastors whose congregation was blessed by a Journey adventure was Ned Nugent, pastor, First Baptist Church, Bethany, and a member of the MBC Executive Board. Loggins came to First Bethany on Jan. 29-30.
“I think people were skeptical when they came, because you have events and you have programs and you come with a preconceived notion that we’re going to come and do this, then we go home and it’s all over,” Nugent said. “I don’t think anyone left thinking that this was something we just did as a one-time thing, but something that we are called to do. I think it strengthened prayer, but it also with a lot of them helped them understand prayer in a deeper sense—the necessity of it in their lives.”
Other churches Loggins has gone to recently include: Colony Baptist, Edwards; Hillcrest Baptist, Lebanon; and First Baptist, Willard.
ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor
apalmeri@mobaptist.org