1 in 5 Believe Prayer Changes the World by Pete GreigPete Greig - 20 Nov 2007

One of the surprising discoveries we’ve made since ‘24-7’ began is this: People who don’t want to be preached at still want to be prayed for. And now the British media is reporting the shock results of a new national survey which seems to prove this point.

The poll of two thousand British adults, commissioned by the charity Tearfund, reveals that prayer is considered a “vital part of life” by nearly half of UK adults, with 20 million people (that’s about 42% of the population) saying they pray regularly, and one in three believing that “God is watching over them”

In a nation like the UK which is increasingly secular and where a spate of recent books about atheism have topped the charts, the discovery of such a deep, residual faith in prayer has created quite a stir. In fact, 24-7’s Ian Nicholson found himself discussing these encouraging findings on the radio last week with the head of the British Secular Society (who was noticeably less encouraged by the report!)

But these findings aren’t just significant for a prayer movement like ours, which began in the UK. They also matter for anyone, anywhere in the world, who is burdened about the apparent secularization of Europe and specifically for those seeking to better understand and relate to the ‘post-Christian’ mindset of the Western emerging culture (which may be less secular than we sometimes presume).

Changing the World

The Tearfund Report drops one more bombshell; revealing that London, heart of the world’s fourth biggest economy and one of the world’s great gateway cities, has also become one of the least secular places in Europe with a staggering 73% of it’s citizens praying and one in five attending church at least once a month. These are encouraging signs as we apply ourselves to pray for the UK and for the nations!

Millions of non-churchgoers in the UK really do believe in the power of prayer to change the world, and they pray on a regular basis:
•    1 in 5 adults believe that ‘prayer changes the world.’
•    9 million people will pray today as they do every day. :
•    12 million people will  pray at least once this week
•    13 million people will pray at least once this month.

A whopping 12 million adults believe that prayer can change the lives of their friends and family. This is encouraging for the 24-7 community as we seek to change the world through prayer (check out our Mission Statement here). What’s more, an even higher proportion of the British population recognizes prayer’s inward, therapeutic power to change their own lives:
•    38% say that it makes them feel more peaceful and content
•    30% say that it makes them feel stronger
•    21% say that it reassures them
•    19% say that it makes them feel happier.

Prayer for Outsiders

These statistics confirm something we already suspected... I could show you the walls of our little prayer room in Ibiza, papered with 2500 prayer requests gathered from the supposed hedonists partying on the streets outside. I could introduce you to a man who knows Jesus today ‘merely’ because he ventured into a prayer room five years ago. I often refer to a humorous conversation with an atheist in a prayer room, which went something like this:
Atheist (whispering): “Wow, You can really feel God in here can’t you?”
Me: “Yup. But you don’t believe in God do you?”
Atheist: “No.” [Pause] “But… you can really feel him in here can’t you?”

Prayer may well be one of the great missional tools for our time, locked away too long in prayer meetings designed for insiders. The fact that so many non-churchgoers believe in the power of prayer presents us with an exciting opportunity for inclusion. Perhaps in our approach to mission, we should focus less on trying to get people to return to the church structures they’ve abandoned and more on affirming the faith they continue to have by addressing the felt-needs that still motivate them to pray.

Confessions of a failed atheist

Take the case of the British television Newsreader / anchorman, John Humphries, who recently released a best-selling autobiography with a fascinating Title: “In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist”. Humphries describes the very condition that brings so many to believe in prayer even though they don’t go to church, don’t know who they’re praying to and don’t really know why they’re praying either. Humphries stopped going to church when he was 15. As a young newspaper reporter in the Welsh Valleys, he found church meaningless. He was bored by its ritual responses, by its priests who seemed to have nothing to say, and even by his own failure to be moved by it all. “Yet,” he writes, “I continued to pray. I prayed every single night without fail for half a century. The problem was that I had absolutely no notion of the God to whom I was supposed to be praying nor, for that matter, why I was praying…”

We now know that John Humphries is not alone as he whispers his prayers to a deity he doubts. There are millions of people like him whose ‘faith’ is hi-lighted by this Survey. Let’s pray that they would find the One to whom they pray. But – and here’s the really exciting bit - let’s not just pray for these failed atheists, agnostics and fellow-pilgrims. Let’s also find ways to pray with them too.