The World Prayer Centre’s As One National Prayer Conference was held at The Hayes conference centre, Swanwick from 13 – 15 March. It was a rich mixture of inspirational teaching, powerful prayer, heartfelt worship, great fellowship and an awesome presence of God. Out of it, we enter a period of tremendous promise and challenge for the Church. Our focus was AS ONE. We believe this is a time when God is building a new level of unity in His Church so that the world can see Jesus through our love for each other, our respect and generosity. We were reminded of the Roman testudo (Tortoise) – which fought and moved as a unit as soldiers interlocked shields and moved as the centurion shouted “As One”.  Here’s some of the key themes from the conference:

• 2017 is an extraordinary year of anniversaries – 500 years since the Reformation, 70 years since Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy, 50 years since Jean Darnall’s and many others. We believe it is a year of extraordinary promise. We see 10 days of prayer in the Thy Kingdom Come call from the Anglican Church, unprecedented unity between the key Christian events with a common call to pray and stand together, and large evangelistic initiatives. Cities and towns are working together to pray for their place, many Muslims are coming to Christ and Christians are seeing a significant response when they take prayer, evangelism and healings onto the streets.
• Call to people of prayer – our hope is that the whole church will learn to love prayer! However we recognise there are many with a particular passion and calling. Our speaker Malcolm Duncan refers to them as the lungs – refreshing and energising the body. We will cover this in more detail with an article in the next Pulse.
• Call the Church – we have a love relationship with Jesus that is expressed in prayer. God wants to change our world through a revived and awakened church. We need to take personal responsibility – how well have we prayed for our leaders to be filled with the spirit and our church events to be filled with his presence? The church is not called to be a bucket – being self-absorbed and focused inward, but a whole series of drain pipes filling up with water and letting the water gush out of us. The church must be distinct – full of love, mercy and compassion and reflecting Jesus. Leslie Newbiggin said, “The local church is called to be an explosion of joy in the community.”
• Call the midwife! We believe a number of key things were birthed at Swanwick, for the nation, for WPC and for many individuals. The promises and prophecies are coming to fruition. On the final morning fifteen midwives came to the front and prayed for the new birth for it to flourish and grow.
• Call to witness – Yinka Oyeken from Reading shared his experience of praying to God for his city before a mission and seeing a tremendous change in the spiritual atmosphere with hundreds wanting to find out more about Jesus. His church has pursued the presence of God since 2008, it went through tremendous tensions and strains but there was breakthrough and a heaven to earth enabling in 2016. Yinka gave us this challenge – the church will never know multiplication until ordinary people lead others to Christ. We need to pray passionately for God to release people to witness – and it starts with praying for ourselves.
• Call to openness before God – Jesus did not come to save super heroes. He himself was broken so we can be changed, not from perfect people but from our own brokenness. We need to be open if we are to be filled to full measure.
• Prayer for the UK –We need to pray for God’s breath in his church, and His presence and fire to move across every part of the UK. We are praying for the seven spheres/seven mountains – politics, economy, children, arts etc. – so we can say – Your Kingdom Come.
• Prayer for Europe – God has called the UK to bless Europe with the gospel. In this year of Reformation we felt God was creating a strong spiritual bond between the UK and Germany this is the moment to reclaim our joint call to send the gospel to the nations.
• Prayer for WPC – we are now in the 25th year since God gave Ian a vision for a Prayer Centre. It was after 25 years of promise that Isaac was born to Sarah. We believe something very significant happened at this Swanwick that causes us to pray for the centre with renewed faith and expectation.

Our call and our commission

Swanwick is not just a blessing for those who attended. It releases something important into the nation. This Swanwick was a spiritual tipping point – all of us are impacted.
We have had a period when we believe God was telling the church in the UK to get ready, now we believe we have been called and mobilised. It is time to

• Be continually filled by God’s Holy Spirit
• Have a deep hunger for his presence
• Expect God’s extraordinary to be released in you and around you
  o His extraordinary resilience in times when the storm blows
  o His extraordinary faith – God can work miracles through you
  o His extraordinary unity – let us passionately promote unity, praying generously for others success, and wanting Jesus to be seen in his church.
  o His extraordinary love – that we might know a deeper and deeper intimacy with Him and have a revelation of how much He loves us.
  o His extraordinary promise that the church will be awakened and our nations will be changed – by his overwhelming mercy.

We are being mobilised. The command is simple – be filled with the Holy Spirit, be ready for action.

Download a PDF with all the dates and anniversaries for 2017

Steve Botham

Director of World Prayer Centre

We said at the end of last year, 2017 would be a year of the extraordinary; Extraordinary good, extraordinary bad and extraordinary unusual at local, national and global level.

Within our own nations political unrest and division is an everyday headline. The uncertainty and challenges coming out of the Brexit vote for both the UK and Europe, together with the constant threat of terrorism on our doorstep. As we look further afield, the continuing persecution and killing of followers of Jesus in a number of countries, (90,000 in 2016); increasing hostility amongst and between nations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe; increased hostility to Israel and the Jews, millions starving whilst nations, radical ideologies and so called religions spend billions on bombs and bullets. We could go on; we are living in extraordinary times.

Extraordinary Faith

In the midst of all that the kingdom of darkness is releasing, our strong belief is that God is ruler of the nations; that He had the first word and He will have the last word. As we go through 2017 we shall celebrate events and prophetic statements that have a significant time line. We celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, 70 years since Smith Wigglesworth prophesied the coming together of Word and Spirit that would herald a great spiritual awakening in the nation, 50 years since Jean Darnall prophesied that the light of the gospel would spread from Scotland across the UK and into Europe, 50 years since the birth of the Catholic charismatic movement. Malcolm Duncan stated that he saw in 2017 across the Church, a renewed confidence in the gospel, a deeper yearning for prayer, a fresh openness to the Holy Spirit, a revived church taking the gospel to Europe.

This year we will see an increased synergy of prayer and mission, synergy being the combined power of a group when they are working together, that is greater than the total power achieved by each working separately. That synergy or unity, will release God’s commanded blessing even life for evermore - extraordinary faith in extraordinary times.

Through Extraordinary Prayer

Prayer is the lungs of the Church. Prayer attracts the presence of God. Prayer changes spiritual climates. Faith filled prayer, persistent prayer, believing prayer, warfare prayer, prayers of thanksgiving and prayers of agreement. Prayers based on the sovereignty of Jesus, the perfectness of God and the truth of His Word releases His power and nullifies the works of the kingdom of darkness. As we pray, “Thy Kingdom come,” that darkness has to shift.

In these extraordinary times our prayer, along with yours, is that God’s breath would fill our lungs as we pour out our praise, worship, thanksgiving and requests. What an extraordinary privilege.

Ian Cole

Founder of World Prayer Centre