Message from Doreen

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When I was first appointed as District Evangelism Enabler back in November of last year it al seemed a long time to go - but now the weeks and months are slipping by and the time for my move back to Kernow draws closer. Much as I love my circuit here in West Devon it will be good to come ‘home’. I wasn’t born in Cornwall but it was ‘home’ for longer than anywhere else ever was and all my children grew up on the Rame Peninsula (only just Cornwall, I hear some saying, but Cornwall nevertheless!) A month or two ago Chris Blake wrote to me and asked me to co-ordinate the 24/7 prayer initiative in the county. Very soon now it will be Methodist Conference time at Torquay and our year - indeed, our fourteen months - of 24/7 prayer* will begin. I was so excited at Conference last year when this initiative was brought to Conference by the Youth Conference and adopted for us all for this year. Can you even begin to imagine what a whole unbroken year of prayer will mean for the Methodist Church?

At its best it will mean that we all learn what prayer really is - we will all learn how to pray. Hopefully we will all move beyond the concept of the ‘prayer group’ as a tiny huddle of probably elderly people huddled in a circle in the ‘shampoo position’, as Adrian Plass puts it, muttering the same shopping list of petitions week by week or month by month, to a dynamic, exciting, life changing daily encounter with God Himself.

Officially each District will have only two or three weeks of the year to cover, (our dates are December 2nd -16th.) but isn’t that a horrendously minimalist way of looking at it, and a real lost opportunity? I am well aware that very few of our congregations are big enough to sustain unbroken prayer day and night for fifteen months (although given real commitment I can’t imagine why every circuit couldn’t - one day of prayer in total for each member through the year - and what about the adherents and the teenagers and the children? Everyone can pray!), but surely every church can be pray each time they meet for worship for the circuit who is bearing the brunt at that time. Surely every church could turn their vestry into a prayer room or a corner of the chapel into a place of prayer and have the building open so that people can pray there whenever they wish.

Why not have a prayer box where people from the community can post their prayer requests? Why not cover one wall with paper bricks where people can write or draw their prayers, building a whole ‘prayer wall’? If you are a musician offer your prayer in music - the lilting melody of praise, the throbbing passion of intercession. Dance your prayer! Sing your prayer! Paint your prayer! Simply be still in the presence of God and let the silence of His presence become the deepest prayer of all. If the whole idea of being so radical is more than you can cope with at least arrange to meet half an hour early each Sunday - the whole congregation, not just a few, and pray for your church, your community as well as the future of this nation.

But don’t stop there. As Christians, citizens of the Kingdom of God and children of the High King of heaven, prayer is really not so much what we do as what we are.

‘The purpose of living is not to learn to make prayer but to become prayer; to live in and for God according to the divine call, wholly surrendered to the spirit’s activity in the soul for the glory of God.’

Prayer is the essential foundation for evangelism and growth, because without it our lives are sterile and we have nothing to share: without it we are cut off from God. May we all pray and work - and celebrate together through the next fourteen months as the Holy Spirit refreshes and renews the church through prayer.

With love in Christ,

Doreen S-D.

(Quote from the writings of Fr. Gilbert Shaw)

* For a full exposition of the 24/7 prayer movement read ‘Red Moon Rising’ by Peter Grieg and Dave Roberts, ISBN 1-84291-095-7 or log onto www.24-7prayer.com and for the Methodist initiative go to www.praywithoutceasing.org.uk