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As Christians, it is our duty to pray for our neighbours and those in authority.
It has become very common to 'prayer-
Taking cities for God has been a trend in seminars, lectures and conferences for quite a while now. The work of Ed Silvoso and C.Peter Wagner is well known and respected in many christian circles. Obvious steps form part of these schemes; research, prayer, visiting, meetings, leaflet distribution and personal witness to name but a few. These are all commendable and necessary and should form part of any God directed and prayer soaked strategy for the preparation of any mission field.
The concept is this: The Ring Of Fire.
When Joshua was preparing to take Jericho, he encountered the captain of the Lords army. The text doesn't mention the rest of the angelic warriors but I picture the scene with a multitude of angels accompanying the Israelites in their marches around the city. It is possible that the residents of Jericho could see them as they apparently offered no resistance.
This was all preparation to the events of the seventh day. The inhabitants of Jericho
were being made aware that God's people were on the move. God's people were increasing
in faith by obedience -
On studying this, I envisaged a group of people standing at strategic places to form a ring around the town. This sounds like an enormous amount of people but on ivestigation it seemed to fall within the reach of the churches of Redditch if we worked together.
Redditch has a population of approaching 100,000 people. The geographical statistics are as follows: At its widest the town is 7 miles accross giving a maximum circumference of about 21 miles. This roughly equates to 37000 yards. A circle of people standing, for example, 100 yards apart would require 370 people. An area with a circumference of 3 miles would require only 53 people. This would be a typical situation for many churches in the UK.
The 150000 people who marched the streets of London in the 1994 March for Jesus could have circled Greater London (using the M25 as a guideline when standing only 2 yards apart.
Taking the strategy to the streets.
This idea was put to the leaders of many churches in the town. Some, obviously, didn't really understand the idea, due to differing theological stances, age of congregation and other reasons. Despite this, the strategy came into being in December 1995. A group of seven local churches took hold of the vision and we mustered the 350 people required for the surrounding of the town of Redditch as mentioned above.
We started with a worship service with people representing many denominations. At
the right time we all set out in cars to various distribution points around the perimiter
of the town. Here we spread out around the perimiter and stood and prayed for the
people in the town, the churches of the town, God's protection on the town and a
visitation of His Spirit. At a pre determined time we all spoke the name of Jesus
over the town and prayed a blessing on the people. After this we all met back at
the start point, a local Anglo-
Ring of Fire
A Prayer Strategy
(Andrew Hall)
(The red dots denote the route.)
In the years since then we have undertaken variations of this event:
- Circling the Town Centre and Civic Buildings
- Praying at the access points ('gateways') of the town.
- Marching the perimiter; each group marching a segment of the perimiter.
- Staking the ground at the gateways with wooden stakes bearing verses of scripture.
Some of these things may seem a bit odd or extreme. Perhaps prayer for the town in the quiet of our church buildings would be adequate. I don't know. This is the only way we have ever seen the common bond of unity of the Spirit take hold of the people and mobilise them.