It is time to move.
In recent years God has been prompting and pushing his people to engage in mission in new ways and to see their role as His body in our society in a fresh light. The Church has responded, changing its emphasis and activities. For example, it has moved beyond its four walls with social action outreach, Street Pastors, Healing on the Streets, missional communities and established pioneering missioners in areas the church had previously little presence. As someone recently described it to me, “the church has picked up its backpack and moved out of the building to walk with people where they are”.
In London, I’ve spent time with many involved in mission, and have been challenged by the commitment and sacrifice made to bring the Gospel in relevant and incarnational ways to those around them. I have also observed their need for prayer and support from the wider Church body.
Whilst the church has, in terms of mission, repositioned itself in recent years, prayer has not followed suit. Prayer, I have experienced, still tends to be within the church’s walls and based upon gathering those who are able to come together. Although in a mission context, prayer walking is increasing, the primary focus of much prayer is still upon the Church and its activities or praying into national issues as if they were something far off. Churches do pray for their parishes and communities, they do pray for the local estates, but that prayer tends to draw people away from those locations to come and pray centrally, rather than sending prayer out into these locations. I believe that there needs to be a corresponding shift in prayer in the UK. Prayer needs to move out of the building too.
In the same way as we have established mission into our communities, we need to embed prayer into them. We need to shift the thinking of the church members from prayer being an activity for sacred spaces, to being an activity that occurs in offices, community halls, parks, and schools across the land. Prayer and mission need to walk in step with each other and at present it is the prayer movement that needs to catch up with the call of the Spirit and follow those who have left the building to be Jesus in our communities.
Corporate prayer gatherings are powerful times when the Church in an area comes together in unity and I have participated in many of these wonderful events, but in the same way as there has been a shift from large-scale mission events to grassroot engagement, I believe that grassroots prayer events will become energised with new life.
I do not think that this shift in scale is permanent, indeed I am believing for days when London’s parks are full of people gathering to pray, and that people’s desire to pray will overwhelm the capacity of many large venues. However, we need to sow prayer in the margins and partner more effectively with the shift in mission that has taken place.