What could go down as the world’s largest prayer meeting is taking place all this month. In an ambitious push to fulfill the Great Commission by century’s end, a massive new movement features on-site and home-based intercessory prayer.
Praying Through the Window II, sponsored by the Colorado Springs- based evangelistic initiative AD 2000, will involve as many as 30 million Christians in more than 100 countries in a monthlong campaign. The first Praying Through the Window campaign took place in October 1993 and rallied an estimated 21 million people to pray for the “unreached” countries within the so-called 10/40 Window. This year’s event focuses on the evangelization of 100 key cities within that region.
The 10/40 Window describes the rectangular area on the globe extending from 10 degrees to 40 degrees north of the equator, eastward from North Africa and southern Spain to Japan and northern Philippines—an area dominated by Buddhist, Islamic, and Hindu faiths, and lacking a substantial Christian presence.
“This is the area where over 2.5 billion people live who are, in the definition of Christian evangelism, the least-reached people,” says Michael Little, chairperson of Praying Through the Window II and president of the Christian Broadcasting Network. “If a person is born within the 10/40 Window today, they probably would not in their lifetime discover who Jesus Christ is, for lack of a church or evangelistic effort in their area.”
Little believes the communications technology is in place to fulfill the Great Commission but says focused prayer has been long neglected and will be crucial to evangelizing the world.
According to C. Peter Wagner, coordinator of the AD 2000 United Prayer Track, which developed the Praying Through the Window initiative, the 1993 campaign has shown remarkable results. Since the prayer movement hit, he says the number of Christian fellowship groups being formed daily in India has risen from an average of three to seventeen. And six months after the 1993 effort, the number of churches in Albania grew from 50 to more than 300. “This movement is based on the hypothesis that prayer is vital for opening the way for evangelization to take place,” says Wagner, who is also a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.
A driving force behind the titanic dimensions of the new prayer movement is the mission of AD 2000, which aims to realize a “church for every people and the gospel for every person by AD 2000.” With an estimated 2,300 people groups still unreached, the organization’s leaders are banking on the power of organized prayer to achieve their goal.
DISSENTING VOICES: Although most missions experts agree that prayer is an essential element in the missionary endeavor, some express reservations about the themes prominent in the new prayer movement. Among the concerns is the disproportionate emphasis being placed on the 10/40 Window countries versus other more accessible mission fields.
“There is a danger in feeling that we all have to get our own ‘unreached’ people,” says Seattle Pacific University and Regent College missions scholar Miriam Adeney. “We Americans tend to go for what is new and what is ‘in.’ There is still a challenge to be faithful among the ‘reached’ people in places like Mexico and some parts of Africa where there is already a Christian presence but, nevertheless, still a great need for laborers.”
Brad Mullen, an associate professor of theology at Columbia (S.C.) Theological Seminary, believes the new prayer movement fails to consider the diversity among Christians regarding the theologies of evangelism and prayer. “Are we saying that God is more positively disposed to save a certain people in a certain locale because we have prayed for them in an extended or particularly fervent way?” asks Mullen. “There is an assumption that if we just pray hard enough, God will do more to save people. There is a theological tradition that would say God has done everything. The question is not whether he is at work in the world, but rather what is he at work doing?”
Mullen is among a contingent of observers who fear that Praying Through the Window’s large-scale, prayer-only efforts may, in the minds of some, supplant the need for a personal proclamation of the gospel. “This movement could give people the false impression that when I am praying for the world, I am evangelizing the world.”
Little disagrees. “We’re not trying to replace evangelism,” he says. “We’re simply asking God to open the way for those who are doing personal evangelism and traditional long-term missions.”
NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD: An area of particular controversy among missions experts discussing the movement is the issue of spiritual warfare. While most Christian leaders and scholars acknowledge the reality of the spirit world and demonic forces, there has been great dissension over the terminology and intercession techniques espoused by some leaders of the movement.
On the one hand, concepts such as territorial spirits, spiritual mapping, and other ideas related to geographically pinpointing the locations of demonic activity, have given many Christian leaders tools they say are needed to pray more effectively.
“The real battle for world evangelization is a spiritual battle, and that’s essentially carried out by prayer in the invisible world,” says Wagner, editor of the book “Territorial Spirits.” “The biblical principle is that the reason unbelievers remain unbelievers is that the god of this age has blinded their minds. The primary way to open their minds is to break the hold of the god of this age. And that is not done through carnal weapons, that’s only done through spiritual weapons—prayer and fasting.”
Still, many evangelical theologians such as Mullen are less inclined to embrace parts of the new methodology. “Some of these ideas, such as prayer walks and territorial demons, are not theological terms,” Mullen contends. “I’m not against prayer, but many of these things have not been given the kind of theological inspection that they require.”
A UNITED FRONT: Theological concerns aside, this month will find a multitude of believers joining together from an array of cultural backgrounds and religious traditions. Some 10,000 people are expected to travel to the 100 cities spread throughout the 64 nations within the 10/40 Window to pray on location, and millions of others will pray in their homes using a comprehensive daily calendar to focus their petitions. And on October 21, at least 200 cities will join in simultaneous prayer through a national concert of prayer, cosponsored by March for Jesus USA and Concerts of Prayer International.
“We’re now focusing effort that has been on some of the easier reached countries to some of the more difficult areas,” Little says. “The worst thing that could happen is that millions of people will be united together, asking God to bring down the darkness that is oppressing those 100 cities.”
Yet, Adeney adds a cautionary note: “We should not focus so totally that we forget that there are needs in other areas of the world.”
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