Presbyterians praying day and night in dedicated rooms, coming out after their allocated hour eager for more. Sound like a future fantasy or reminiscence of past glory? It’s neither. Amanda Wells investigates.
A round-the-clock prayer movement is starting to spread around Presbyterian churches in New Zealand. 24/7 prayer takes prayer out of its slot in a church service and into the realm of community activity, and has its roots in a phenomenon that began on the other side of the world.
Talk to Kiwi Presbyterians involved in 24/7 prayer and a common thread emerges immediately: the book Red Moon Rising by Pete Greig and Dave Roberts, which relates what grew from a month of non-stop prayer at a youth-oriented church in Chichester, in the United Kingdom, in 1999. Th is month was itself inspired by Pete Greig’s visit to Hernnhut, a European monastery where Moravians had prayed continually for 125 years. As he says, it’s hardly a new idea.
Red Moon Rising chronicles the explosive growth of the 24/7 movement (as in “24 hours a day for seven days”) through the UK, Europe and Australia. It also explains that the wave of prayer isn’t just about setting up prayer rooms but about consecrating the spaces where people seeking God can be found; the streets, night clubs, and the inner city.
Omokoroa Community Church in the Bay of Plenty has embraced the concept, holding a staggering seven continual prayer events during the past two years, with more planned for next year.
Pastor Fergus Keith says Omokoroa conducted a visioning exercise at the start of 2006, which resulted in a decision to refocus on prayer. Shortly afterwards, he read some Salvation Army magazines that profi led 24/7 prayer and then “devoured” Red Moon Rising.
In 2006, two sessions of 24 hour prayer over three days were held, along with one 24/7 that coincided with Holy Week. Th is year, the church has prayed 24/3 three times and held a 24/7 at Easter. In 2008 the three 24/3 sessions are planned, along with two 24/7s.
Fergus says the shorter times seem to work just as well as the week, which he says helps give extra focus to Easter and preparation during Lent. Next year the second 24/7 will coincide with a mission trip to Malawi that will be a focus for the prayer.
More and more people are becoming involved in praying, he says. Th e church has three services on a Sunday that range from traditional Anglican to youth-focused, with about 150 people attending in total (Omokoroa is a co-operating church with Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist links). Between a third and half have spent time in the prayer room, and Fergus says it’s been a unifying force for the church.
The roster sheets are put up on the wall “and for a while people don’t do anything”. Then a couple of days beforehand they start to fi ll up and people sign up for more hours during the week itself.
Fergus says the church has gone through a period of tremendous change and growth in terms of its mission, with the congregation seeing the prayer movement as an important part of that. “It’s raised the level of prayer in our church.It’s just been huge and absolutely central to our life in the church in past couple of years.”
One issue has been how to take this energy out from the church into the community; “how do we do this 24/7/365?” Fergus says a teaching series on prayer is planned and other outwardly focused resources are being explored.
Further north, Forrest Hill Presbyterian on Auckland’s North Shore spent fi ve weeks praying during July and August 2007. Worship team leader Bernie Bristow says the parish council was talking about the need to pray for leaders, and at the same time prayer was being organised for someone going on a mission trip.
“Some people in the congregation had been reading Red Moon Rising, and Peter [her husband, the Rev Peter Bristow] was doing a series on prayer, so they decided to set up a prayer room for fi ve weeks to coincide with this.”
The room was decorated with candles, books, large crosses that had been made at Easter, a “wailing wall” of intercessory prayers that people could add to, and art supplies to create with. For the fi rst four weeks, the room was open between 6am and 9pm, and in the fi nal week it was run 24 hours a day.
“People just really got excited,” Bernie says. “People would often say ‘I don’t do that kind of thing’, step into the prayer room for fi ve minutes then sign up for an hour.” The room became a kind of holy ground, she says. “Most people who went in took their shoes off .”
Forrest Hill youth intern Fiona Sherwin expresses similar sentiments. “It’s instantly a calming place,” she says.
The youth group held a special night in the prayer room, with four different stations set up. The first of these involved lots of candles and sitting in the dark in silence for 20 minutes. “They couldn’t believe how quickly the time passed.”
Another part of the room was decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars, and designed as a meditation on refl ecting light in darkness. A third concept was centred on beauty from brokenness, with people writing down frustrations and worries on pieces of colourful paper that were then torn up and made into a tree (see facing page). The fourth station was a prayer chain with people’s names written and then linked together.
Fiona says the young people were blown away by the different experiences of prayer. “They might say ‘I don’t know what to say’ but this was different creative activities where they don’t actually have to say anything.”
“Young people crave authentic experiences.”
Bernie says, “people were amazed that they could pray for an hour; there was always something to do. Prayer wasn’t sitting there in a quite corner with your hands together. It just changed the whole idea of what prayer is.”
Forrest Hill is planning to hold another period of prayer, probably post-Easter 2008.
Bernie says she would really encourage other churches to explore the idea and recommends reading Punk Monk, another book by Red Moon Rising author Pete Greig, which she describes as “really thought provoking”. “It’s about stepping out and being a follower of Jesus diff erently; looking at what is it we’re actually trying to do.”
The movement has also spread to farther south, thanks to a family connection.
Mosgiel Presbyterian decided to test the waters with a 24/1 prayer event, which involved praying for 24 consecutive hours. Parish secretary Josephine Keith, who’s the mother of Omokoroa’s Fergus Keith, says it was such a positive experience that they are hoping to hold to a 24/2 event soon, perhaps in association with the completion building work in November 2007.
Josephine says she was inspired by reading Red Moon Rising during a visit to Fergus and returned to Mosgiel eager to run a local prayer event. She started telling people about the book and bought three copies to pass around, enthusing Otago and Southland mission advisor Bruce Fraser in the process. Bruce says after reading it he’s also started giving copies of Red Moon Rising to parishes in the Synod of Otago and Southland area.
In Mosgiel, the church hall was set up as a prayer room with the help of some of the parish’s young people. It featured a number of stations off ering diff erent avenues into prayer. Th ere was a blackboard where people could write whatever was on their mind and then erase it; a wall on which prayer requests for other people could be pinned; maps to mark places to pray for; a cross surrounded by cushions that could be knelt on; and a water feature that people could sit and listen to; and a painting station at which people could paint their prayers; and the hall was fi lled with candles.
More than 30 people spent time in the prayer room, including the youth group who spent time there during the middle of the night.
She says feedback from the event was very positive. One pray-er wrote to say she wished she had signed up for three hours rather than 30 minutes, with others expressing similar sentiments.
“We just don’t do enough praying,” Josephine says.
National mission support manager Heather Simpson coordinates a loose network of pray-ers around New Zealand, sending out an email every month or so highlighting key needs.
“We all pray differently,” she says. “Some people need a list of things; other want to concentrate on a specific person or church.”
A well-known Presbyterian pray-er is minister emeritus the Rev Catherine Hollister Jones QSM. Catherine says she’s aware of the 24/7 movement and has spent time in a Salvation Army 24/7 prayer room in Tauranga.
She says at the moment she feels a strong calling to prayer for cities, particularly for people working at city councils. Catherine attends a regular prayer meeting for staff at the Tauranga City Council, and would like to see this happen in other cities around New Zealand.
“My vision is to saturate cities in prayer.”
In the Mataura presbytery, there is even a paid position dedicated to prayer.
Margie Rae is prayer pastor at Tapanui Presbyterian. Her role was established in 2001, when the church decided to employ someone 20 hours a week specifi cally to foster and encourage prayer.
Part of Margie’s role is to run corporate prayer times, whether during services or at meetings or other gatherings. She also prays with people who drop into the church. “Every now and then people just walk in off the street.” And there’s an administrative aspect to the role, with the coordination of a presbytery-wide prayer support network that organises parishes to pray for each other.
She says the church’s strategic prayer team has held several 24-hour prayer sessions, one at the church where other local churches were also invited, and one where people picked timeslots and prayed in their homes.
While people might have thought her key task was to be a prayer coordinator “in actual fact it’s a whole new box”. “It’s about understanding that nobody prays the same and growing in that understanding. Our whole prayer experience can grow.”
Margie observes that people are often keen to learn new songs or read that latest book, but we don’t always have the same culture of learning new ways to pray.
“I’ve always said that I’m not a super-spiritual person. I’m just an ordinary person, but it’s really exciting when ordinary people pray and there’s so many diff erent ways in which we can do that.”