The Lord's Multilingual Prayer: A Music Video from Prayerscapes

Published: July 12th, 2007

For many years now Julie and I have felt called to reclaim the arts for God. The new age movement in its creativity and expression has hijacked much of Gods creation to evoke its own vision. The sun, the moon – hillsides and water – poetry and music and dance are the Lords and we have longed for these things to reveal His beauty and lead others to Him.
A few years back, Pete Greig approached us to see if we would be interested in creating an unusual, creative sound experience. His idea was to record many different languages praying the Lord’s Prayer – to create a mass cacophony of heart cries to God, all joined together in that extraordinary prayer that Jesus taught us.

At that time we’d already started creating what can best be described as “prayer soundtracks” for our local church (Revelation Church, Chichester – the birthplace of 24-7). These soundtracks recorded and mixed together scripture reading, prayer, song and filmatic type music to create an unusual worship experience.  When it came to recording the Lord’s Prayer, it was quite a challenge to find people who were near enough to come to our studio and record the prayer in so many different tongues! However, God was gracious and we were able, in the end, to record lots of languages and accents - even Hebrew! It was a real privilege for us to see the track featured on the 24-7 “Chill” album.  We’ve had lots of reports of people using it as worship in prayer rooms, small groups, larger gatherings, even Cathedrals! On the back of this encouragement we decided that we wanted to take the track one stage further and make it into a music video.

We live in a 24-7 culture, in a world where time never stops, where day is night, night is day and where texting and noise never cease. What we saw in our minds was a film set at night. In the middle of hubbub and urban street sounds God was being reached out to and found. We wanted to create a gritty, urban feel for the prayer and so we approached a church in the USA (Tribe) who filmed street scenes of downtown New York. We then edited the footage here in England last year. So here it is!

For a larger version of the video, visit 24-7's English Resources Section. 

The world is changing. The way we communicate and access information, and find community is shifting. People will not necessarily go to church or pick up a book to find out more about God. Increasingly people are surfing and interacting with the web. It is so important that God’s voice – His heart – permeates and presences the net.  We’ve just launched a new website that seeks to be a cyber place of worship and inspiration - prayerscapes. The website features soundtracks developed in a similar way to “The Lord’s Prayer”. Each track takes a theme to meditate on, such as dreaming for God, or the Passion of Christ, and unfolds the theme using scripture and music. The whole album we're offering on the site is an hour long (hey that’s 24-7 prayer room thing!). There are also free downloadable bible notes with creative response ideas for small groups, and a couple of other downloadable films, and instrumental loops for reflection/prayer.  We'd love to hear any comments about the material, especially if you have the opportunity to use any of it.

Neil Haydock has been married for 12 years and has a three year old son, Charlie. Neil and his wife Julie often lead the worship at Revelation Church in Chichester.  They aspire to making prayer and worship a creative encounter with God. Neil is a composer and teacher, and Julie a portrait artist. 

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