Madison: A Marker Moment for the 24-7 Movement: Page 2

All you need is love

On the other side of the room, wrapped in a candy-pink scarf, I can see our old friend Kelly Greene, the petite American who’s dreaming of a Boiler Room community to serve the pimps, prostitutes and unwitting priests of Boy’s Town in Reynosa, Mexico. Kelly’s celebrating because two years of prayer were answered last Friday when she completed the purchase of a plot of land on the outskirts of Boy’s Town on which to build her centre. I wish you could have heard her talking last night about the way God is working in the broken souls of her adopted hometown. I know you too would have been deeply moved.

Today we commissioned Jo Wells, a girl from Liverpool, England who’s moving to Mexico on Monday to join Kelly. It’s a big deal: Jo will effectively double Kelly’s team in Boy’s Town! She seems really nervous yet excited too. Jo was involved with establishing the Boiler Room at John Lennon’s Strawberry Fields, so it seemed fitting to conclude our time of prayer for her by singing the Beatles classic: ‘All you need is love’. Everyone grinned and clapped and sang along: “Love is all you need”. Simple, smiling things can sometimes be the most profound.

Nude baptisms

Jo and Kelly are now sitting quietly listening to an older guy called Jon Petersen who’s standing with his back to the fireplace, addressing the crowd. He’s telling stories, yarning about California in the 1970’s when he found himself caught up in the white-water rapids of the Jesus Movement through which thousands of hippies were swept into the counter-culture of Christ’s Kingdom. Fresh out of college, Jon started a simple Bible study and within months it had become a church of several hundred. Thirty years later, everyone’s laughing because Jon just told us that his first baptism service was on a hippie nudist colony. I guess we’re all trying not to imagine the scene too vividly. And the funny thing is that, as we laugh, Jon’s looking round the room at all these young weirdos – shaved heads and dreadlocks, earnest young women and clean-cut, preppy types too - and he says he feels like the Jesus movement is beginning all over again. Not because of the fashion – haircuts come and go – but because of the passion, the wild, simple, shared values which seem to be incubating around the world right now on blog-sites, in coffee-shop conversations and in random gatherings such as this one.

To bless and to build

Listening to Jon intently, right next to me, is a former male-model who now lives in the Kansas City Boiler Room building and reaches out to the local homeless guys. They’re known as ‘dumpster-diners’ because of the way they gain their food from bins. He’s been tagged ‘the white guy who hangs with the homeless’.

Next my gaze falls on Roger and Donna Nix; pastors from Tulsa, Oklahoma – the ‘buckle of the bible belt’. They’ve been sharing about the unprecedented way that churches in Tulsa are coming together across the racial and denominational lines to pray 24-7 for an entire year to mark the centenary of their State. They’ve been pleading with us, therefore, that as we build Boiler communities we also continue to bless historic denominations and churches by just giving away all that we have. It’s a timely challenge – the Salvation Army just called to tell us that they are planning a year of 24-7 prayer in one of their American ‘territories’ and to order a thousand copies of Red Moon Rising. The Nazarene denomination is also approaching us for help. Last weekend a bunch of us were in Phoenix, Arizona witnessing the incredible stirring of 24-7 Prayer on so many American campuses, right now. People have prayed for decades to see this kind of spiritual hunger amongst the young.

Next Page: 24 Hour Part People, The Fisher King, Hey ho! Let's Go!