Last month, we featured an article on the explosive impact that Triplet Prayer had in the UK as recounted by Brian Mills. During the last week or so as those of us on the National Prayer Assembly team here in the USA pray and think through a national strategy for the prayer movement, the idea of encouraging prayer triplets has come front and center. The Lord has been using it in various parts of the world for years and is currently doing so to bring spiritual revival and transformation in part of the Texas prison system. One of my American prayer leader colleagues told me recently that they have been using prayer triplets among prisoners in the Texas prison system for some time now, and a full scale revival has been happening with 1100 of the most hard core gangsters, drug addicts, Satanists, and homosexuals coming to Christ and joining these triplets. Even the warden of the prison got impacted and repented. The revival is now in 10 of the 23 prison units around Houston and these prisoners are praying for revival for us on the outside!

I am recommending Prayer Triplets as part of our national prayer strategy for the USA and also to various international ministries we are in touch with. As Brian Mills has put it:

“It came from God and was in Scripture long before we appropriated it! Moses with Aaron and Hur in Exodus 17, Jesus with Peter, James and John on the Mount of transfiguration and in Gethsemane, and of course Jesus' teaching in Matthew 18:19-20 (He's always in the midst when we pray). God seems to think in threes - Father Son and Holy Spirit. ‘Two are better than one and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken’!   So all glory to Him.”  

As a prayer mobilization model, I think it would be of great blessing and benefit to many organizations and to the wider population of believers and churches as well. It is a sustainable way to mobilize prayer at the grassroots and in every social sphere. So simple and based on Matthew 18:18-20. With cell phones now in everyone's hands, it can easily be practiced when folks are in different places as well.

Here is Brian Mills sharing how this model of transformational and evangelism praying developed and the wonderful impact he and others saw in the UK. Please have a look and see what you think.

Brian Mills on Triplet Praying

https://youtu.be/CD8G9Pbdptk

For those of you who want to go deeper in exploring this model for your own city or nation, Brian has allowed us to use this chapter in his book, God is Still Speaking that is still available through Amazon.com

John Robb, IPC Chairman

“God Told Me: Prayer Triplets & Cells for Growth”

Years ago I heard of a man who had a book in which he wrote the names of all the people He prayed for.   Quietly, throughout his life, he would write in the names.   At the end of his life, when his possessions were being sorted through, 18 books were found, in which were over 2,400 names.   Against each name were two dates.   The first date was the day on which he started to pray, and the second date was the day the person was converted.

I admire the perseverance and the prayer life of someone like that.  I only wish I was like that, and even more that all of God’s children could be like that.   How the church would grow!

On reflection stories like that not only inspire me, but provide me with the challenge to make it happen.   Before the formal start of Mission England (1982-85), the national team of Gavin Reid, Eddie Gibbs, Clive Calver, and myself, together with Tom Houston our Chairman, met together frequently.   It was a time for dreaming dreams, envisioning one another, making plans, and taking initiatives.   We had embarked on the early stages of a national mission to touch every sector of society, and every city, town and village in England.   We all had experience in leading national movements, and were committed to evangelism.   We had been part of a working group of leaders at national level that had published a report “Let my people Grow”, which had gained widespread exposure in all branches of the Church.   We were learning about church growth principles from elsewhere in the world and from missiologists.   If there was to be any growth in the church in England, there needed to be a fundamental change in existing attitudes.   We had to embark on a period of training and envisioning, which could culminate in an extensive period of mission in multiple centres around England.

Our idea was to have two years of training, and one year of outreach, with subsequent years of follow-up and consolidation.   Through the help of agencies like the Bible Society, Scripture Union and the Church Pastoral-Aid Society, we were able to publish the training courses that between us we compiled.   Gavin Reid and Eddie Gibbs were particularly skilled at this, and took the major responsibility, although we each had input into the material.   We set up training courses around the country in which we trained trainers, so that within their regions they could be available to provide training in the churches.

Before all this could occur, we recognised we had to do an envisioning tour around the country to bring Christians together, and to alert the Church to our vision and plans.   Clive Calver, then the Director of British Youth for Christ, had a good deal of experience in arranging tours through his YFC connections, so he took responsibility for putting on a series of events called “Prepare the Way”.   Then the team turned to me and said, ‘Brian you are the person to get the church in the nation praying’.   I didn’t baulk at this.   I was the only one at the time, I think, that was actively involved in prayer groups across the denominational spectrum.   It was the time described in the previous chapter.

But how was I to go about motivating the church to pray?   At the time there were few prayer movements in existence.   Intercessors for Britain and the Lydia Fellowship were all I knew about.   Evelyn Christenson, the American author of books on prayer, had done a tour among women, from which a small new movement ‘Prayer Chain Ministry’ had begun in Scotland and Northern Ireland.   Dick Eastman, another American mission leader, had introduced his ‘Change the World School of Prayer’ at several locations.   But at the time there was no existing prayer organisation to follow up on this.   ‘Crusade for World Revival’ – producers of ‘Every Day with Jesus’ and ‘Revival’ magazine had a strong prayer emphasis within their publications.   But that was about it!

At first I had no idea how to go about things.   I asked God to guide me and give me the key to mobilising the church in the nation to pray.   One day a Christian from Guildford telephoned my office asking to see me as he had something to share with me.   My Secretary tried to put him off as she knew I was very busy trying to do many things, as usual!   Nevertheless he was insistent.   So eventually he came to my home.  

‘God has told me that you are struggling to find a key, and that others are asking you to come up with a plan.   You are not to be pressured into things.   God wants you to wait before Him until He shows you the key’.   He could not have known about my responsibility to get the church in the nation praying.   Nor could he have known that my colleagues were pressurising me to come up with a plan.   I took his word as from God.   And I waited.

A few weeks later, I was having a bath, reflecting on a mini tour I had just completed with Steve Maxted, during which he had talked about small group prayer.   As I pondered this, I found myself thinking in threes.   If we could get people meeting together in threes to pray for their friends by name – three each – so that between them the group of three became committed to pray regularly for nine altogether, then this might work, I thought.   I had already discovered that God is at work in our thoughts if we are walking with Him.   This was such an occasion.   God was speaking to me through my thoughts.  

As one does, I had a discussion with God in the bath.   I asked Him about the idea.   The Holy Spirit was leading to me to think of threes meeting together in neighbourhoods, colleges, schools, businesses, praying for those they had most contact with who were not Christians.   Praying together in threes meant that they could encourage one another by praying for each other’s friends, as well as their own.   They could be praying for each other when they knew that something positive and active was going on.   This would be an active, regular weekly commitment.

And so the idea concerning small group prayer was shared with the rest of the Team.   It was Gavin Reid who coined the phrase ‘Prayer Triplets’.   The vision was launched through the ‘Prepare the Way’ tour that was held in multiple venues throughout England. This tour kick-started the Mission England programme of church growth and evangelism.   Before long prayer triplets were multiplying all over England.   Within a matter of six weeks we were beginning to hear of people becoming Christians.   Some groups were seeing 5 or 6 of the prayed-for people converted in as many weeks.   Scripture Union helped by producing materials targetted at school and college Christians.   Groups were starting in many walks of life.   Maxi-groups (three married couples) as well as mini-groups (three individuals) were being formed.   This vision for prayer caught on so quickly, that we weren’t equipped to maintain contact or monitor what was going on.   God took it and multiplied it.   He gave us the key, we sowed the seed, and the rest was the work of the Holy Spirit.

There was a need for some teaching on prayer.   So I arranged a programme of seminars throughout the country.   We had to devise some teaching materials to help people understand some of the dynamics at work as we pray.   Evelyn Christenson returned for another tour, which I helped to set up.   I joined her at every venue.   In six cities a total of 12,000 women had a day’s teaching on prayer, and were introduced to prayer triplets.   Evelyn was so impressed that she took the materials and started to speak about prayer triplets wherever she went in the world.   Within six months, we were hearing of prayer triplets being started on every Continent.   There were even prayer triplets in the palace of the King of Tonga!  

We asked for regional prayer coordinators to be appointed.   Each of them took the vision and worked at multiplying it within their region.   As each region was establishing church-based coordinators as well, these regional prayer coordinators then arranged some gatherings to equip church-based leaders.   Within every training event during that year of 1983, prayer triplets were launched.   By the beginning of 1984 we began to ask those attending preparation meetings how many were in prayer triplets, and how many of the groups had seen at least one person converted.   From all the feedback we had, we estimated that something like 30,000 prayer triplet groups existed, and that 12 per cent of them had seen at least one person converted.   Most of us had also met many individuals who had seen all nine of the people their group was praying for brought to Christ. Factoring this in, we conservatively estimated that 4,000 new Christians were in the kingdom of God and within our churches, as a result of prayer – many weeks before Billy Graham arrived.   This was exciting and new.   A few churches even doubled in size through the answers to prayers offered in their triplet groups.

When the evangelistic phase of the mission took place, the response to the preaching of Billy Graham was twice the expectation, and the percentage response was double what he had experienced elsewhere in his long and distinguished ministry.   Most observers considered that the reason for this fruit was due to the success of Prayer Triplets.

A fuller story of what God did at that time has been written in ‘Three times three Equals Twelve’ – the story of prayer triplets.   This book was also published in Australia as the recommended Christian book for the bi-centennial anniversary of Australia’s founding, under the title ‘Prayer Triplets’.   But the story didn’t end with Mission England, or with the evangelistic phase.

Since then many British evangelists began to include Prayer Triplets as part of their preparation for missions throughout the late 1980’s and 90’s.   I was involved frequently in doing prayer preparation teaching for Eric Delve, the Saltmine Team, J John, and Don Double.   Mission Wales with Luis Palau included prayer triplets.   Billy Graham returned for further stadium meetings in Sheffield in 1985 and in London in 1989.   At the same time some 600 video missions were held throughout the British Isles.   All of these also included prayer triplets as part of their preparation.

Students going up to Universities were encouraged in their first term to form prayer triplets on the corridors of their halls of residence, as a means of providing a caring context for their own spiritual safety, as well as to enable them to reach out to others.   Through the Evangelical Alliance we produced over the years a variety of materials for use by churches to encourage Mission triplets and Community triplets into being.   At large scale events, like Explo 85, prayer triplets were introduced to the many thousands of young people attending the locations throughout Europe.   Prayer triplets were transforming the experience of Christians in many nations, leading to large numbers coming to Christ.   I’ve heard of programmes based on prayer triplets being launched nationwide in Switzerland, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Australia, and India.   The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association adapted the vision for use in their ongoing ministry and missions.

The original intention within our Mission England strategy was for prayer triplets to continue beyond the mission phase.   We envisaged that triplets would have a life of 12-18 months anyway.   After that they needed to split so as to involve the new converts in good prayer habits, and to bring in Christians who had not been involved before.   So the growth being experienced in the early days could continue.   Unfortunately, most saw it as a tool for prayer/evangelism, which then tended to be discontinued after the evangelistic phase.   Why?   Because the momentum was not continued, the vision and motivation was not there. Unfortunately in Britain we tend to see prayer and evangelism as events rather than as processes.   To this day it is a cause for personal regret that we didn’t mount an ongoing national strategy to encourage an ongoing prayer triplet movement.   I think we could have seen much more blessing had we done so.

In the late 1990’s prayer triplets turned up in another form.   The burgeoning cell church movement has included prayer triplets as their main means of growth.   The process known as G12 is an exact application of the idea.   Three people meet together to pray for nine.   When all nine are converted, they are incorporated with the group of three to form a cell.   So after a period of growing together, the twelve then split off to form four more triplet groups and repeat the process.

Mathias Bolsterli, leader of the International Christian Fellowship in Zurich was told by God that he had to postpone a planned holiday with his family and instead accompany me on a tour of Swiss cities.   I had been invited to launch prayer triplets and a new publication about prayer (translated into Swiss German) that I had authored.   He understood from God that he was going to learn something that would be vital for his future ministry.   I had not met Mathias before, so to hear this at our first meeting was a bit overwhelming!   But I had to trust God that He would implant something.   Mathias came as my translator, and so night after night he heard about prayer and more specifically about prayer triplets. He had recently started a cell church.   After the tour he introduced prayer triplets into the cell structure.   Each week each of the cells were to break down into prayer triplets at some stage during the evening and pray for their non-Christian friends.   Once a month each cell planned a social event to which they invited their prayed-for friends.   From this people were attracted into other ‘sinner-friendly’ activities of the church, which included a regular Sunday evening multi-media presentation of the Gospel.   The church he started has since then extended into many other cities within Europe, each having a similar DNA.   The Zurich church, meanwhile, has grown to be the largest in Switzerland.   It is a praying church!

So did this simple ‘idea’ get born in a bath?   Not really.   It was part of God’s DNA for His children long before.   Jesus in Matthew 18.19-20 speaks about the power of agreement in prayer.   He said ‘If two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.   For where two or three come together in my Name, there am I with them’.   Groups all over the world have found this to be true.   This is more than a proof text for small numbers.   Jesus never uses words wastefully.   There is a dynamic in the numbers he used.  

He had His own prayer triplet – Peter, James and John – the three He chose out of the twelve to accompany Him on a prayer vigil on a mountain and in a garden.   On both occasions the three became sleepy and dozed off.   Yet for Jesus He was having a vital, extraordinary encounter with heaven.   On the first occasion the glory of God came down and He talked with Moses and Elijah, as well as His Father.   In the second, He was battling with the powers of darkness, and with the horror of what He was about to go through.   Through both he wanted to share His experience with his three friends, and in the process teach them something more about the deep things of God, available to us through prayer.   In one God was very much present, in the other He seemed to be absent.   In one it was glorious and His face shone, in the other it was agonising, and His faith was tested.   These extremes of prayer, when heaven and earth are joined as one, are the substance of our ongoing communion with God.   Prayer is never ordinary – it is always extra-ordinary!

Prayer triplets – a tool for today’s church in all cultures – is a God-given concept to help His church grow and to improve the prayer experience of ordinary Christians.   I feel immensely privileged to have been God’s modern-day channel to bring this into existence, at least in my own country.

 Taken from “God is Still Speaking”, published by Sovereign World Ltd and authored by Brian Mills.   Used with permission.