A Uniquely International Prayer RoomDominie Heald - 17 Jun 2011
Dominie Heald, who works at Holy Trinity Brompton (a vibrant Anglican church in the heart of London), shares her thoughts on their uniquely international 24-7 prayer room which took place last week as Alpha leaders from dozens of nations, across the five major continents, gathered for Alpha’s International Week.
How do you create a prayer room for thousands of people from hundreds of nations? I’ve never seen so many different kinds of national dress in one place; African, Middle Eastern, Asian…The room looked particularly striking on entrance, as one whole wall was covered from floor to ceiling in flags representing every nation present at the Alpha’s international conference. We double and triple-checked we had them all, as the last thing we wanted was for anyone to feel left out! However we did somehow manage to put one flag upside-down…oops! We also had a giant inflatable globe, a waterfall made of lights, and a prayer wall. To balance all the outward prayer, we created some prayer tents out of mosquito nets and cushions, and had a wall of worship lyrics for people to read and ponder
The room loosely followed a Nicene Creed theme, that is: ‘One holy catholic church’. We wanted to encourage a sense of unity as one body, despite the hundreds of different places that everyone had travelled from.One of the nicest things on the prayer wall as we were packing down was where one person had written quite largely: ‘Lord, send me,’ and after it someone else had put an arrow and written ‘me too!’ Clearly plenty of people had the same idea, because a trail of lots of little ‘me too’ followed in different people’s handwriting! What a lovely illustration of the body of Christ at work.
The week flew by with inspirational news from round the world, incredible people sharing their heart and vision for their nations, and the family of the church coming from all around the world, with all their different pasts and futures, worries and hopes, and just being family together – eating together, worshipping together, learning together, getting fed and filled and in turn blessing all those around them. It was wonderful to see so many faces listening to the same talk in different languages, swapping email addresses and stories, and praying for one another.
One thing that really struck me as I rushed to get to a shift (my mind focused on trying to remember my schedule for the afternoon) was when I saw a delegate from Ghana looking unmistakably (and unashamedly) like an African preacher, sharing the gospel with 5 London teenagers who were just locking their bikes up outside the church building. His smile could not have been bigger, and his eyes just radiated love; they were hanging on his every word! I thought, wow – he came to get fed and be blessed, but here he is blessing our city in return. That is what happens when God’s kids get together!”
The Prayer Room was captured on video which was posted on the blog last week, if you haven't already seen it do check it out.
This report was originally posted on the 24-7 UK site