Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Published: April 27th, 2010

Canterbury is a small city in the southeast of England. It’s a city famous for prayer. Prayer is deep in our roots. In fact, our oldest church, St Martins, is a chapel built nearly 1500 years ago by King Ethelbert for his wife Bertha. Bertha was a Christian, whereas her husband was a pagan. So desperate was she for his conversion that she would visit the chapel each day to pray for him … and she did that for 35 years!

Canterbury is also a testimony to answered prayer. God heard Bertha’s heartcry, and sent a bunch of monks, all the way from Rome. St Augustine arrived in the city in 597 AD, and his preaching of the Gospel finally brought King Ethelbert to faith. Augustine settled in the city and the rest is history.

We’re over 1400 years on from Bertha and Augustine now, but it seems there has never been a time in all those centuries when there has not been a community of people in the city committed to prayer.

So, the small group of us, 21st-century pilgrims, who have begun to talk and pray and dream of a 24-7 Boiler Room in Canterbury, are just the latest page of a very long history. Six years ago I lent my copy of the book ‘Red Moon Rising’ to my mentor. Having finished it, she asked me one simple question:

When is Canterbury going to have one of those boiler rooms then?

For me, that was permission to dream, and I couldn’t get my mind off it. I talked about it to my closest friends, and they got excited. I shared it with others who were passionate about prayer, and they got excited. In fact, if all you needed for a boiler room was some excitement, we’d have had five within the first year!

But excitement isn’t what you need … well, not exclusively. What you need is a community. That’s what the story of 24-7 Prayer told us, and that’s what Canterbury’s history told us. Places aren’t changed by one person getting excited. They are changed by a group of people pledging to dig in and pray there together.

Our community started to form last year. We decided to meet weekly, to talk and dream and pray together about what this thing called boiler room might look like in our city. We took advice from local church leaders, we listened to the stories of other 24-7 communities, and we watched and prayed.

In October 2009, I hit a real low. Our little community seemed more fragmented than ever, and the dream seemed to be getting further away instead of nearer. But God has a remarkable (if terrifying) way of turning things around very fast. November brought us several key events and suddenly we started to feel the breath of Heaven stirring on the back of our necks again. It felt like time to move!

For many years, ‘Boiler Room’ had been an idea … a vision … an aspiration. Even with our little praying community, we knew it was still a long way off. Yet God was telling us to ‘do something’ … to cross over into a new place. He seemed to be telling us to get ourselves a prayer space.

The property we found was fantastic. The rent was fair. The estate agent owners of the building seemed genuinely nice people. It all looked perfect. But there came that final, heart-in-mouth moment when we knew the next step was off the cliff, with no going back. How do you know for sure that something is right? Well, in our case, you ask for a clear sign from God.

Please God, if this is you, will you bring us pledges of money to cover 85% of the rent for the first year? (We reckoned we had just about enough faith to believe for the last 15% ourselves.)

If God gives a sign and that means ‘yes’, then God gave us a resounding ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’. A week before our deadline, we had 99% of the rent pledged for the first year.

So, we have taken the plunge. The cliff edge is a long way behind us now, but we’re not looking back. We moved into our Boiler Room Prayer Space on 6th February 2010. We have taken up residence inside the city!

We have learnt a few things along the way, and as it happens, they’re all about companionship. We’ve learnt that we need to stick together as a community, as we travel this journey, no matter how fragile that may seem at times. We’ve learnt that we need to partner with other praying people around our region, because Canterbury has been a proud, isolated place in the past, and God wants to change all that.

Most importantly, we have learnt that we need the presence of God more than we need his promises. We keep dreaming … we keep longing … we keep looking to the fulfilment of our hopes … but none of it is worth a scrap if we do not travel in the company of our living God. It is his very presence that heals and transforms.

For hundreds of years now, the community of Canterbury Cathedral has gathered at 5:15pm each day to pray. Conscious that we are the continuation of that centuries-long thread of prayer, we have decided to join that ancient rhythm. I close this story with the prayer that we pray every day … and in fact it’s 5:15pm as I write this, so writing it out will be my prayer for today:

Father, you say that you know us by name, and that we have found favour with you.
 Teach us your ways, so that we may continue to find favour with you.

Father, you say that your presence will go with us, and that you will give us rest.
 Lord, remember that this city is your people. 
If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.


How will anyone know that you are pleased with us and with your people unless you go with us?


What else will distinguish us and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?

Father, you have said that you will do the very thing we have asked because you are pleased with us and you know us by name.


Lord, show us your glory!


Amen.
(Based on Exodus 33:12-18)

Lyndall Bywater lives in a community in the historical city of Canterbury, England.  The Bywater family is made up of her husband Phil, Hugo (the black lab guide dog) and Oscar (a black cat with attitude!). Phil is an accountant and spends his time auditing other people's accounts, while Lyndall works for the Salvation Army and spends her time persuading people to pray. (We leave it up to you to decide which is the easier job!) Lyndall has been a great friend and champion of 24-7 Prayer and now serves on an International Team resourcing and championing prayer within the movement.

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