The incredible journey of a Church on their knees: Lyndall Bywater interviews Gillian Best about the story of the Methodist 24-7 Prayer community in Ireland and how devoting themselves to prayer has impacted a denomination across two nations.
Q: So what kind of community are you part of, Gillian?
A: I feel like we don’t really fit into any of the categories for 24-7 communities! We are a family of believers who call themselves Methodist! As a community we stretch across the whole Island of Ireland. Not everyone has connected to this 24-7 prayer thing, but from Derry in the north to West Cork in the South, churches have taken on the challenge to pray 24-7.
Q: How does a long-standing denomination like yours get infected by a wild, God-chaotic thing like 24-7 prayer?
A: Well, I don’t think you will want a Methodist history lesson, but we do feel there is real significance in the fact that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, spent time with Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians from Hernhut, leading to his conversion experience at a Moravian Prayer meeting in London, and that the impact of this part of church history on the 24-7 prayer movement has also had an impact on the people called Methodist.
Our connection to the 24-7prayer movement happened because some young people read “Red Moon Rising” and loved the challenge of it. They set up prayer rooms at “Autumn Soul”, which is our national event, and They challenged their peers to take it home to their communities and churches. Our Methodist leadership in Ireland quickly got the sense that the significance of this spread far beyond young people, to every generation.
So a call went out to the whole Methodist Church in Ireland to do a year of 24-7 prayer in 2007. The title was “From our knees”, and the vision was “the posture of a church prepared for mission; working for justice. Inspired by young people, ‘round the clock prayer’ by Methodists who thirst for the Spirit’s life in a changing church.”
Q: What does 24-7 community look like then, when it’s spread across a whole island?
A: About a year before we started, myself and another of our key volunteers attended the 24-7 prayer leaders gathering in Dresden, and felt very much like we were watching from the sidelines, waiting for God to speak! During one of the sessions I had a picture of a map of Ireland with lit tea lights all over it, and a sense that God was saying that these prayer rooms were to be the light of Christ in communities all over Ireland. We’d only done one “Autumn Soul” prayer room by that point!
At “Autumn Soul” a month later, a young lad of about 15 came to us during the response time to say he’d had the same picture as me, but some of the lights were out. So we challenged the young people to take the light home and get praying!
Our vision for the year was that churches all over Ireland would do weeks of 24-7 prayer, then pass the baton on to another church. God challenged us that if these “tea lights” were to get lit, we would need to model the prayer room thing, to help the church get it. We realized there was a huge office space in our building that had not yet been rented out! We decided to meet there for prayer each week until God gave it to us! We only had to meet twice and then the owners said yes!!!
That room has been very significant in the story of our spread-out community. One morning I woke up with Isaiah 56 in my head. I had no idea what it said, and to my shame I don’t know if I had ever read that passage before! We felt it was God’s promise that this place would become “a house of prayer for all nations” and that he would gather others, besides those who were already there. That has been and continues to be true. In the run-up to the 2007 year of prayer we had three times of 24-7 prayer from that room in Aldersgate house. People from churches came to experience 24-7 prayer, and they took it back to their own contexts.
Q: How do you hold all the threads of your community together?
A: Because we are a community of people spread over an Island, the small group which oversees 24-7 has to intentionally gather to tell stories and pray. we regularly spend time listening to God, so that we’re not just going off on a tangent with our great ideas, but seeking God’s heart for the 24-7 prayer movement in connection with our denomination!
At a wider level, events like “Autumn Soul” and the Methodist Conference give opportunities for stories to be shared around.
Q: What difference do you think your 24-7 community has made to your denomination?
A: For me it is about God lighting or rekindling fires across an Island, about bringing a church back to their knees and sending them out to impact their communities and their world!
Traditionally we have prayed in a circle with our eyes closed!!! I feel that this experience of prayer rooms is changing that. Churches are creatively coming before God, and are starting to engage all the senses - giving people space to write, draw, sing, and cry out their prayers to God. And God keeps surprising us with stories of him at work, impacting people in ways we hadn’t expected. Churches we never expected to get on board have called us for help, because they want to be a part of this experience.
One of the most amazing impacts has been the mixture of generations who have connected through 24-7. Log books have come back to us with stories of whole families coming to pray together, and the parents’ joy at praying with their children in these spaces.
Young people and children have been deeply impacted too. At our 9-13’s event, loads of kids chose the prayer room over the disco!
I suppose we have also raised the profile of the 24-7 Prayer movement among main denominations in Ireland, and made it doable and significant.
Q: And what have you learnt about God through this amazing story?
A: That it’s all about him!!! Sometimes, in the midst of frustrations, when people just didn’t get it, or we wondered if there was anybody out there praying, God kept reminding us that it was about him. In the lead up to the year of prayer we really did start to doubt whether we had heard God right, because it was nearly January and very few churches had signed up to pray. But of course it was just our lack of trust. God had it under control.
I also had to learn that if the shape things took was different to what we wanted, then it was us that had to change, not him! I used to get frustrated that churches were “not brave enough” (my words, no-one else’s) to take a risk and go 24-7. Instead they’d just do three days or just daytimes. I learnt that God still used it anyway, to impact people and churches in big ways. Just because it wasn’t done our way didn’t mean it wasn’t of God!
For myself and our two full-time volunteers, one of the most significant weeks was a week around an area in the North West of Ireland. An amazing girl called Lorraine had rung us and said that loads of the churches in her area would be too small to try this on their own, and she had a mad plan that for one week each church would take a 12 hour or 24 hour period, set up a prayer room and cover that time in prayer. She asked us for help and we jumped at the chance!
Bizarrely, the first prayer room I was involved in that week opened at 4am in Donegal Town, and ran for 12 hours. What blew my mind was the mixture of generations, and the same people coming back maybe 4 or 5 times in a 12 hour period. What will stand out is a conversation with a lady who was already dreaming up a scheme for how the churches could try to get some space in the middle of the town, and together set up a prayer space for the community (we’re still praying this will happen!).
It was a rollercoaster week, and some churches jumped in more than others, but at the end of the week we had a celebration service in Derry which was packed, and the Minister in charge of the area said it had been the most significant week in 20 years in that part of Ireland for the churches!
Q: What are your dreams for the future?
A: That we in the Methodist church (and all the others of course) will draw people to us, that churches will be seen as places of safety and love for the hurting and broken, and that we as people of faith will draw alongside those who need to know the love of God, because we are in intimate relationships with God ourselves, and people sense that!
Q: OK, Gillian, last question… What are your top tips for starting 24-7 prayer community in the middle of a denomination or network of churches?
A: I’ve got three:
1. Keep a window open. we have been really challenged by actually physically making sure we can see the world outside from inside a prayer room, if possible (and if not, then doing it figuratively). That way, the needs and circumstances around the prayer room can fuel the prayers, and spur us on from our knees back to our feet.
2. Get your 'permission givers' fully on board. Our permission givers have been fully involved in all that we've done, so it is endorsed at every level of church life, and that has given real freedom in accountability.
3. Most of all, be on the look out for God moving in the 'widow's mite' offerings. The widow gave all that she had, but laid alongside the rich man's offering, and taken out of context of her story, it could have looked like nothing. some of our churches have had an afternoon of prayer, or 12 hours, or just one 24 hour period, and they were literally offering “all that they had” to God. Laid alongside the big stories of weeks and months and years of prayer, their stories could get lost and seem like nothing, but before God they were beautiful offerings, and just as transforming as the seemingly big gestures.
Gillian also shared this prophecy for Ireland:
Recently, while praying for Ireland in our prayer room, one of our volunteers felt God saying this, specifically for Ireland!
January 08- Gods message for New Year
My people cry out to me
They cry out to me
They have broken hearts
They are thirsty
They are hungry
They are in wilderness
They are miserable
They are in desperation
They do not sleep
They are in darkness
They are sick.
I Am Answering Their Prayers Through 24-7!
I am waiting for them in these rooms.
To heal them and give them what they need.
If they humble themselves and seek me I will answer.
They have prayed in their homes, in their bedrooms. I’ve heard their cries in the middle of the night. And I promised to answer, and I am…. Come find me and your answer in the prayer rooms.
I am answering people’s prayers through the prayer rooms.
You call them ‘Prayer Rooms’ because people come to pray in them.
I call then ‘Answer Rooms’ because I’m answering people’s prayers in these places.
Tell My People I’m Here!!!!
Where Are They??
Don’t they want to receive their answer? It’s ready and waiting for them!
I want to help… I hear and I’m responding.
Come and see what I’ve got for you.
24 Stories of Prayer is a two year project that will continue up until the tenth anniversary of night and day prayer mobilised through the 24-7 Prayer movement. Each month we'll bring you another snapshot of how a person, church, community or denomination has learned to pray by praying and how God has responded to their conversation. We hope they inspire, instruct and spur you to thank our Father for how awesome He is on the earth.
Missed the previous two '24 Stories of Prayer'? Why not take a moment now to read the stories of the 24-7 communities in Thun, Switzerland and Vancouver, Canada.
