How I’m Learning to Change the WorldChloe Allan - 24 May 2013

In February of this year I embarked upon a 5-month adventure with 24-7 Prayer. The Vision Course is a life-changing experience of radical discipleship, personal growth and 24-7 prayer. I was asked to give some insight into what life entails for a Vizzie (the name adopted by Pete Greig as ‘Vision Course student’ was too long!), so here is a not-so-normal week in my not-so-normal life while on The Vision Course.

Restin’ - Sunday

The team returned for a well-earned day of rest after a week helping Prayer Spaces in Schools at the Spring Harvest conference. It was an amazing time, getting people excited about running their own Prayer Space and helping the kids engage with the Prayer Space on site; pretty much becoming celebrities to the 5-7 year olds.

Learnin’– Monday

Monday is always a full on study day with lectures from amazing teachers. The morning started with prayer and worship, followed by a lecture by Pete Greig on the warm and fluffy topic of spiritual warfare.

As usual, we had lunch together with our lecturer, and in the afternoon the lecture topic turned to God’s economy, followed by faith and repentance by the leader of the Vision Course Hannah McVeigh.

We had the privilege of being joined by some lovely Swedes for the afternoon (last week we had some Norwegians so we only need some Danes now to fill a Scandinavian set).

Hannah had a friend joining us for the day who asked ‘is it usually as good as this?!’

The answer’s easy: YES 

Three of the Vision Course Students: (from the left) Zoe Moass, Sarah Millican, Chloe Allan

Road Trippin’ – Tuesday

Instead of the teacher coming to Guildford for our second days of lectures, we went to visit them in the seaside town of Littlehampton. We spent the day looking at the topic of the ‘Body of Christ’ and thinking about our gifting. Before heading home we broke out the sunnies and enjoyed some down time on the beach.

Inspirin’ - Wednesday

Wednesdays give us a chance to go out and serve the community by volunteering in different places around Guildford; this Wednesday we went to a local school to help in running a Prayer Space.

I spent a large portion of the day blowing up helium balloons at one of the prayer stations, and generally running interference so that the year 8’s couldn’t make their voices go high and squeaky.

It was a pleasure to be there and watch the children engage with the activities and see them realise that prayer isn’t a dull irrelevant task, but a place they could have fun and chat with God about their dreams, doubts and fears.

Schemin’ – Thursday

Today we helped out the team in the 24-7 HQ.  After blitzing through a glamorous job of stuffing envelopes we set to work finding content for the 24-7 daily app.

That evening we headed up to London to join in with HTB’s (a lively Anglican Church in the heart of London) Kingdom Come event, led by Pete Greig. It was a great night of Spirit-filled worship and noisy prayer for the nation.  As we grabbed a lift with Pete, we got to HTB early and so got to join in with the team and band before the meeting began.

Growin’ – Friday

(Today had that morning-after feeling, I am sure I pulled something praising).

I spent some time with my mentor.  The Vision Course has a real focus on character development and every student is assigned a fantastic mentor to journey with while they are on the course.

That night the Vizzies ran the youth club for the young people in Emmaus Road Community Church – the church family we have been adopted into while on The Vision Course.

Facilitatin’ – Saturday

The Vizzies assembled for the highly anticipated 24-7 GB Resource Day and fellow Vizzie Sarah got given the job of facilitating the day.  Armed with a clip board she inspired fear and awe in the rest of the team. It was great to be able to play a part in inspiring and resourcing people to pray, as well as seeing people encouraging each other with stories of answered prayer and God moving in their communities.

After an exhausting day I sat down with some cake (one of my favourite things about The Vision Course: the amount of cake!) and started planning for when I lead student collective next week. Collectives are the smaller communities that Emmaus Road break into and the student collective has been my home for the past few months.

So, looking back on another busy week learning how to change the world, I am pretty tired but feel full of fun, adventure and mostly, God. Life as a Vizzie never has a dull moment. Bring on next week!

If you would like to come and do The Vision Course then check out the Academy pages, there are still a places to join us for the September course in both the UK and USA.