The 5y80 Objective

The Lord is calling His people to fight the spiritual battle for our country and the world through prayer and intercession. This is the reason for The 5y80 Objective.

5y80^TM stands for 80% of the Christians in America having or developing a “Good Prayer Life” and maintaining it for five years.

This is not an unreasonable goal in light of the fact that our independent research indicates that over 96% of American Christians, surveyed Sunday mornings believe God wants them to have a good prayer life, as long as it is acknowledged that due to different seasons in life, different personality types, and different likes and dislikes, etc. many people’s Good Prayer Lives will not look the same as other people’s Good Prayer Lives, but they both can be good.

The independent research has also given us strong indications that the majority of average American Christians are currently finding it difficult to achieve the prayer lives they personally believe God would like them to have, but they want to try and get better.

It appears that the Strategic Prayer Initiative (SPI) may have been birthed for such a time as this. Even though there have been at least half-a-dozen times that appeared to be the Lord significantly guiding the way, people can still, at times, think the Lord is more involved in something than He is. We do think, and believe, the Strategic Prayer Initiative (SPI) has been raised up for such a time as this. However, in humility we have to admit that only the Lord knows if He has been intimately and comprehensively involved in the work of SPI (The 5y80 Objective, and the College of Revival), but we do know this: “prayer is powerful” and “the Scriptures tell us to pray.”

Following is One Mathematical Interpretation for The 5y80^TM Objective:

At the time the 5y80 Objective was drafted, the population of the United States was approximately 320 million people, which is why 320,000,000 is the number used in the following calculations. We have chosen to just stay with that number even though the population has grown each year since then.

We are estimating the number of genuine Christians to be approximately **3% of the country. Hopefully there are a lot more than that, but even if our number is too low, it still can give us incrementally five (5) million more people developing and maintaining GPLs then we already have. Only God knows how many true believers there are in the U.S., but we do know that Jesus Christ said it would be the few, not the many (Matthew 7:13-14).

320,000,000 x 3% = **9.6 million – a conservative estimation of committed Christians in the U.S.

We know that approximately 96% of the 3,700+ individuals we have surveyed (on Sunday mornings) believe that as long as you don’t force everyone into the same mold, that the Lord wants all of His true followers to have a good prayer life.

9,600,000 x 96% = 9.216 million – feel the Lord wants them to have a “Good Prayer Life” (GPL^TM).

Next, we are allowing for 20% who are just not able to pursue a good prayer life right now (even though they believe God wants them to), because they are temporarily in some type of very difficult season in life (e.g. burned out, have been deeply hurt, have suffered some kind of tragedy, etc.) and are unable to pursue a deeper and better prayer life at this time. We know some of these problems can move one closer to God, but let’s assume that for whatever reason, this 20% just cannot go there for now.

9,216,000 x 80% = 7.373 million – Make up the 80% of the self-professed Christians sitting in the pews.

The SPI Diagnostic Survey work has indicated that approximately 28% of those in surveyed churches or groups have told us that at the time of the survey they had either a “Good Prayer Life” or a “Mature Prayer Life.” This means we have approximately 7,373,000 x 28% (a little over 2 million) who currently have a “Good” or a “Mature” prayer life, and over five (5) million who can only classify their prayer lives as “Fair” or “Poor.”

7,373,000 x 28% = 2.06 million – Who already have a good or mature prayer life.

7,373,000 x 72% = **5.309 million – Who are working towards developing a good or mature prayer life.

**[If there are actually say 6% or 9% etc. true Christians in the U.S. vs. 3%, these numbers could actually be much higher.]

It is very important to let you know that the SPI Diagnostic Survey work we have done indicated that 40% to 55% of those surveyed (on Sunday mornings) said they had never had a “Good Prayer Life” (GPL^TM) or had had a good prayer life only a small portion of their total life as a Christian. Additionally, since past performance is the greatest predictor of future performance, it is a fairly safe bet that unless a new approach is tried with this huge portion of the church, most will never get to “Good Prayer Lives” (GPLs) based on all of the methodologies that have been tried up until now.

If you are a Christian, can you pray and ask the Lord if He would like you to be part of The 5y80 Objective? If you personally do not already have a Good Prayer Life, the PrayerCords^TM tools can get you off to a good start with only a three (3) minute a day commitment, and a brief meeting once a month. If you already have a good prayer life you can really help the work of the Kingdom of God by using your stick-to-itiveness and successes to help one or two others who do not have a “Good Prayer Life,” to develop one. [The use of the 14 question SPI Survey is critical to always use first.]

If being in a PrayerCord seems too structured, starting a 5y80 Team, or a 5y80 Partnership can help you get yourself, and/or others to a good prayer life, with even less of a formal approach. All that is involved is that you pray each day for the Holy Spirit to help you and your 5y80 Team Member(s) to grow in fervent, righteous, and strategic prayer, and then you ask them how they’re doing either monthly, bi-weekly, or weekly (your choice), but more often is typically more effective. Of course, just praying for them, and asking them how they are progressing will not do anything if the team members won’t try to get better, but if you always use the short SPI Survey with them in advance, you will know directly from them whether or not they are willing to try. If they don’t want to try, it may be better to choose others who do, to be on your team.

When you contact them, you will be offering gentle accountability by asking them how they would self-rate their prayer life, since the last time you checked in with them. Your team member(s) will self-rate their prayer life by choosing one of these four answers: Poor, Fair, Good, or Mature. Our mission is to get 80% of America’s self-professing Christians up to at least the Good Prayer Life level (the GPL^TM level), and help them to strive to stay there for five years. Instead of a life-time goal (which is what most of us believe our Heavenly Father would ask of us), we are asking each Christ follower to shoot for a five-year goal, for the purposes of The 5y80 Objective. We know this longer-term five-year goal is a difficult one, but it is very important for the sake of our nation, and perhaps the world. (We do have materials that help define what it actually entails to have a “Good Prayer Life.”)

Our nation urgently needs more prayerful intervention, and by saying yes to being part of The 5y80 Objective you will be part of something far greater than yourself.

You will be part of a huge spiritual experiment, or what may actually prove to be a Divine plan, a plan that holds a true potential to wake the sleeping giant (i.e. the prayer lives of millions of average American Christians – what we also call “the middle-of-the-bell-curve”).

If we all would help to wake up just one, or two [maybe more, but only if you want to] of these average American Christians, this giant (literally millions of the Lord’s people) could help usher in titanic changes in our nation. So, we ask as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, would you join The 5y80 Objective and become committed for yourself, and to help one or two others, to fulfill Scriptures’ call to us to be devoted to (Colossians 4:2) and persistent in prayer (Luke 18:1), while we ask that our prayers would be used by God to move mountains (Matthew 21:21-22).