Prayerwalkers appeal to God to take back community

Posted: 2/02/07

Prayerwalkers appeal to
God to take back community

By Laura Lacey Johnson

Special to the Baptist Standard

A new government program is bringing positive change to a crime-laced neighborhood not far from Shiloh Terrace Baptist Church in Dallas. But church members determined to take back their community have appealed to a higher authority—by prayerwalking.

“The idea is to heighten the level of consciousness about the condition of the neighborhood and get the congregation more involved in praying for the spiritual climate to make the changes from the government program more viable,” said David Balyeat, interim minister for missions at Shiloh Terrace.

Shiloh Terrace held its first prayerwalk during a recent DiscipleNow weekend and targeted specific areas to “till the land” and identify places where the church can minister, he explained.

The church has planned additional prayerwalks, and participants hope to see the high crime rate—more than 1,500 offenses during 2006—decrease, Balyeat explained.

“At the end of the year, the police will provide statistics to see the effect of the spiritual” involvement, he said. “We will see change. God desires change.”

In their 1993 book, Prayerwalking, authors Steve Hawthorne and Graham Kendrick define the practice as “praying on-site with insight.”

“On-site praying is simply praying in the very places where you expect your prayers to be answered,” they wrote.

Hawthorne and Kendrick insist insight comes in three forms—responsive, researched and revealed. That is, prayerwalkers formulate prayers by using what they see during the experience, what they learn about the area from research beforehand and what they discern from the Holy Spirit.

“Lives are forever changed,” said a Texas Baptist missionary couple who recruit Christians to prayerwalk with them through a busy market in a mountainous region of North Africa.

“Even though we told them how to pray at home, they never understood until going and seeing for themselves,” the missionaries said.

David Lowrie, pastor of First Baptist Church of Canyon, recently participated in two prayerwalks in Asia to help develop what he called “new streams” of ministry opportunities where four of the church’s missionaries are serving.

“We drive so much these days,” he said. “There is something about walking. You don’t see as much when you drive. You become much more aware when walking than you could be even if you were driving slowly.

“Jesus walked everywhere he went. That may be part of the key to so many of the stories we read about in the Bible. Jesus was walking by people, not driving by.”

Distractions can abound for prayerwalkers.

“You have to discipline yourself so you are not just taking a walk,” Lowrie observed.

Hawthorne and Kendrick maintain one way to do this is by writing down Scripture passages ahead of time and referring to them on the prayerwalk, praying them in your own words.

In addition, it is important to remain focused, especially when immersed in and praying for a culture other than your own.

Members of the North African prayer teams have said they experienced “sensory overload” due to the unique activities found in the locations of the prayerwalks.

“The market is noisy with the hawkers,” the missionaries to North Africa noted.

“It is dirty compared to our grocery stores, with sheep and cows being slaughtered in open-air areas, teeth being pulled under a tent … and of course, the smells.”

Prayerwalkers may not immediately see the impact of their efforts, participants noted.

“One hundred years from now, when we are in heaven, it will be interesting to see if anyone we prayed for made it” to heaven, Lowrie said. “Prayer-walking may actually be a prelude to long-term intercession for a specific group of people.”