Putting Feet to Your Prayers - Christianity Today

We sat in the interrogation room trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for our behavior. We couldn’t tell the police in Bosnia the real reason for our actions. They wouldn’t understand.

We were prayer walking.

A dozen of us from Jefferson, Oregon, had come to visit two United Nations workers in this war-ravaged village half a world away. The police might accept that, especially when we explained that we brought clothing and money. But why, they would ask, were we strolling the streets, looking around, then catching a knowing glance at one another and mumbling to ourselves?

We might have gotten away with it, if one of our number hadn’t done the touristy thing and snapped a photo of a passing army vehicle. The police were suspicious of foreigners. Now they had us at the station for questioning.

This was a matter for prayer.

But then we were used to that. So many amazing things had happened since that pastors’ conference ten years earlier, where God had started the transformation in me—in us all—and we became a praying church.

Meeting with no agenda

We had no agenda at that conference. Joe Aldrich, then president of Multnomah Bible College and Seminary, billed it as four days away just to pray. The four days away sounded especially inviting. My church was embroiled in the usual fights. We didn’t get along. At 200, the church hadn’t grown much during my tenure. We had tried every program I could find or concoct. After 13 years as pastor, I could point to little I considered an accomplishment. I was exhausted and at the end of myself.

But that’s the point—I was at the end of myself. Joe called a number of pastors to come to Salem for this first prayer summit. He envisioned pastors praying together, and their churches and communities praying together. He wanted to encourage us in our complete dependence on God. And there I found that it had been many years since I was completely dependent on God. In prayer I was convicted of my own prayerlessness, of trying to program the work of God in our church. And the church I led was just like me.

I returned to my pulpit with a renewed commitment to seek God’s face and His will for our church. We had tried everything else. Before my congregation, I made a personal commitment to make prayer a priority in my life.

“I have been a prayerless pastor,” I told a subdued gathering. “I didn’t realize how important prayer was in experiencing God’s blessing and presence. That is going to change in my life and, I hope, in the life of our church.”

I set a personal goal of one hour per day in private prayer and two hours with others from the church. If just one other person met me at the church to pray, I knew I could keep that commitment.

My congregation was willing, even eager, to join me in prayer. Almost everyone came to those first sessions. Then attendance dropped off—sometimes down to a handful. But we kept praying. And over time our daily meeting grew.

Our one prayer meeting has developed into thirty or more sessions every week. Prayer has taken every conceivable form in our congregation. We pray in homes and in the streets, with believers from other churches, and over the lost. In prayer, we have grown to one thousand regular attenders in our town of 1,800. In prayer we have found God’s purpose for our church and an expanding region around our church. We have seen Joe’s vision realized, that we would simply be together, united for the cause of Christ, in prayer.

Praying for the Easter people

Over the years our prayers and our prayer groups have become very specific. And so have our praises when they are answered.

About two weeks before Easter, I preach a sermon on evangelism. I teach how to pray for lost neighbors and how to pray that we would be effective in reaching them. Each member writes down the names of seven neighbors, friends, and co-workers who don’t attend church anywhere. We call it our “Seven for Heaven” card.

Around the clock for ten days we pray over these names. Fifteen or more people will be in the prayer room at all times. Each one who prays for a lost person initials the card with that person’s name on it.

At a special service last year, we asked those who had come to Christ during this emphasis to share their experience. One man stood and told us he had been saved at the Easter service.

“I heard I was on one of your cards and that I was getting prayed for almost every hour,” he said. A friend who worked with him knew he needed the Lord and submitted his name. “That gives you a weird feeling knowing that’s happening. I came to the Easter service, and God really worked in my life. I am committed to praying for people I know now and writing their names down so you all can pray for them.”

The friend who had submitted this man’s name had become a follower of Christ the previous Easter. And that person’s name was submitted by someone who’d had that experience two years earlier. We had three generations of Easter people. That really energizes the people who prayed for them, and the whole congregation, to pray all the more.

And it communicates the vision. When our church sees people come to Christ, then they see what we’re all about.

Prayer has strengthened our commitment to evangelism and to missions. And it has stretched our faith. This church really believes that the only way to accomplish God’s goals is through prayer. By praying for them, we are motivated to do what is needed, whether that’s giving money or giving time or whatever that need might be.

We recently completed construction of an auditorium. In the final phase, we needed about $200,000. We made it a matter of prayer. Our people were moved and gave more than $250,000 in one Sunday.

“It’s amazing how God worked in our hearts,” one man said after he and his wife gave to the church the money they had saved to recarpet their house. “God turned us into cheerful givers.” And God rewarded them. A contractor in the congregation in turn gave the couple carpeting he had left over after building a house. It was just the right amount.

We have developed this sense that nothing is impossible if we’re willing to pray.

Tuning the prayer orchestra

Our monthly Friday night concert of prayer serves as a good introduction to the prayer ministry for new members. This well-organized service includes a lot of worship music, prayer by appointed leaders, and a little prayer in small groups. It allows people who haven’t prayed in public to grow comfortable with the idea.

From there we encourage them to find a prayer group to attend regularly. We have general-interest groups, prayer for missions, men’s groups and women’s groups, and women who pray for lost husbands. One group prays for our children and youth and another for our church’s school and the public schools.

They meet at all hours, from before sunrise to midnight. But I tell the congregation when I announce the various meetings, “If none of these fits your schedule, start another one.” So they do.

More than half our congregation attends at least one weekly session. My presence at the initial meetings was important, but the congregation has taken over this ministry. Now, I attend about ten sessions each week, but the ministry has far outgrown me.

I dare say it has outgrown our church.

With prayer, a broader vision

We have learned how to pray for our community in the past ten years, often on site. After hearing Steve Hawthorne, author of Prayerwalking, at a pastors’ conference, I shared the concept with the church. They took it on as a project. Many members have sponsored prayer walks in their own neighborhoods, providing maps, refreshments, and even lunch for the walkers. We sometimes announce our prayer walks in the newspaper, inviting residents who see us on their streets to share their prayer needs. On a recent walk, one man stopped to talk with the pray-ers and was led to faith in Christ.

Our vision for the area is expanding. Our prayer walk team is mapping the region within 20 miles of our church, and we will begin systematically walking through and praying for the people here in the Willamette River Valley.

Our youth will pray at the borders of Oregon this summer. Traveling by bus over a four-day period, they will stand at each corner of the state and, in all-day meetings, pray for the salvation of the lost, especially teenagers like themselves.

And we will join 80 other churches in prayer walking Highway 20, which runs all the way across the state. John Halvorson of Pray USA prayer walked the United States. After he spoke at our church, one of our members said, “If Halvorson can prayer walk across the country, then we should be able to cover Oregon.” So he is heading up the project. Enough volunteers have signed up for a stretch of highway to cover the whole state in a single Saturday.

Keeping it fresh

You might wonder how we keep this constant emphasis on prayer fresh, how we sustain a sense of urgency. This is a work of the Spirit, so the easy answer is that He keeps us all called to prayer. But there are some ways I encourage the congregation.

I preach on prayer frequently. We do not devote more time to prayer in our weekend services than most churches do, but the content is often about prayer. I preach on our total dependence on God. And I often illustrate my sermons with stories of answered prayer.

The growth of prayer groups is organic. People have freedom to start whatever meetings they feel led. Some of our 30 groups have been meeting for years.

Commitment is important, so we ask for prayer commitments each year. Last year 75 percent of our worship attenders signed a card stating their time commitment for the year.

I urge men especially to lead their families in prayer. In the early years, more than three-fourths of our pray-ers were women. Now almost half are men.

We keep a variety of techniques available to our people, and we often introduce new methods. Prayer walking excites some; small groups stir others. Periodic prayer events, such as the Easter emphasis, unite the whole church in prayer.

My meetings with the pastors of Jefferson’s eight churches keep me energized. I share with my congregation how God is working in other churches as well as our own.

And we look for opportunities to share prayer experiences with neighboring churches. We have concerts of prayer involving other congregations several times each year.

Led from a Bosnian jail

I identified with Paul in the two hours we were detained in that Bosnian jail. Two of our group were questioned in the interrogation room while the rest of us prayed just outside.

It seemed much longer, but after a couple of hours, our host came in his official capacity and we were released. Later, as we prayed again, we had the clear impression that God had wanted us to pray in that place, where many of those responsible for resettling the area and reestablishing the government were stationed.

We’re going to Romania next. We’ll have church members prayer walk there this summer. And in Bangkok and Senegal. We’ll walk through slums and around Buddhist temples asking God to save lost people, just like we do at home. Our church believes all this praying makes a big difference—for all eternity.

Dee Duke is pastor of Jefferson Baptist Church, P.O. Box 240, Jefferson, OR 97352. He can be reached at jbc@jeffersonbaptistchurch.org.