The Vanguard of all Mission Activity

From Church Planting, Prayer and the Sovereignty of God, by Matt Green:

Our response to the plight of the unreached reveals the depth of our view of God. Do we truly believe it is the mission of God to reconcile the nations to himself? And, as counterintuitive as it may seem, do we believe that our proclamation of the gospel is the means that he has ordained to accomplish this? The Indonesian church planters I met are deeply aware of this truth—and it is what gives them faith when their efforts seem frail in the face of spiritual opposition.

It is what drives them to prayer—the vanguard of all mission activity. As S.D. Gordon writes:

We can do no thing of real power until we have done the prayer thing. Here is a man by my side. I can talk to him. I can bring my personality to bear upon him, that I may win him. But before I can influence his will a jot for God, I must first have won the victory in the secret place. Intercession is winning the victory over the chief, and service is taking the field after the chief is driven off. Such service is limited by the limitation of personality in one place. . . . Prayer puts man into direct dynamic touch with a planet.